The Data Engineer Role.We're looking for a Data Engineer who can build and scale the infrastructure powering our data platform, with a strong foundation in distributed systems and cloud-native tooling. You'll design and operate the pipelines that move, process, and prepare multi-terabyte and streaming datasets - including audio and video - for Reality Defender's detection models, and you'll work closely with ML engineers and researchers to keep that data flowing reliably at scale. Responsibilities include:
- Design, build, and operate large-scale data processing pipelines handling multi-terabyte and streaming datasets, including audio/video transcoding, feature extraction, and preprocessing workflows.
- Deploy, scale, and troubleshoot containerized workloads on Kubernetes and AWS in production environments.
- Build and maintain distributed data processing jobs using frameworks such as Spark and Ray.
- Design and operate workflow orchestration systems (e.g., Airflow) with dependency management, retries, monitoring, and alerting for production pipelines.
- Administer and tune enterprise databases, including performance tuning, backup/recovery, access control, and scaling strategies.
- Partner with ML engineers and researchers to support training pipelines, model retraining triggers, feature stores, and other MLOps workflows.
Who you are.- Hands-on experience with Kubernetes and AWS, including deploying, scaling, and troubleshooting containerized workloads in production environments.
- Proficiency with high-performance/distributed computing frameworks such as Spark and Ray for processing large-scale datasets.
- Experience with workflow orchestration tools such as Airflow (or comparable systems like Dagster, Prefect, or Luigi) to schedule and manage complex data pipelines.
- Strong programming skills in Python and SQL; experience with Golang is a plus.
- Demonstrated track record building and operating large-scale data processing pipelines, ideally handling multi-terabyte or streaming datasets.
- Experience working with audio or video data at scale is a strong plus (e.g., transcoding, feature extraction, or preprocessing pipelines).
- Familiarity with common data transformation patterns applied to large datasets (ETL/ELT, batch and stream processing, data validation and quality checks).
- Experience designing and maintaining job orchestration systems, including dependency management, retries, monitoring, and alerting for production pipelines.
- Bonus: experience orchestrating machine learning workflows (training pipelines, model retraining triggers, feature stores, or MLOps tooling).
What we offer.Reality Defender offers the following benefits to all our employees, regardless of location:
- Healthcare plans with 100% premium coverage for employees and partial coverage available for dependents
- Dental and Vision plans with 100% premium coverage for employees and their dependents
- Short/Long-term disability and life insurance plans with 100% premium coverage for employees
- FSA/HSA and 401k programs
- Equity compensation
- 20 days of PTO per year
- 12 weeks of Parental Leave
- Learning and Development budget
- Monthly wellness benefits
- Annual company-sponsored offsite
For employees working from Reality Defender's HQ in NYC, we offer the following benefits:
- Daily in-office lunch through UberEats
- Commuter benefits
- Remote Fridays
- Happy Hours and other local events
