Staff Backend Engineer - Data Platform- San Francisco

Haus

$150K — $180K *
Information Technology
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 10+ years of software engineering experience, focused on backend and data expertise.
  • Hands-on experience with cloud data warehouse or lakehouse, preferably BigQuery.
  • Deep SQL/dbt experience for effective schema design and complex queries.
  • Expert-level Python skills for building robust services.
  • Proven track record of technical leadership at the Staff level.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication to advocate for technical decisions.

Responsibilities

  • Architect and build backend services for high-throughput data ingestion.
  • Address distributed system challenges related to data processing.
  • Own the design and performance of the lakehouse/warehouse as a product.
  • Set engineering standards for testing, API design, and code review.
  • Drive architectural decisions on GCP/BigQuery/dbt/Python stack and align with other teams.
  • Mentor senior engineers and influence the organization's data strategy.

Benefits

  • Flexible PTO for work-life balance.
  • Equity options in a startup environment.
  • Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance.
  • Work-from-home stipend for equipment setup.
  • Events and offsites for team connection.
  • Free lunch when working from the office.
  • New parent leave for welcoming new family members.
Full Job Description
The Role

This is a dual-depth role: backend systems engineering + data engineering. You'll design the services and pipelines that ingest data at scale and the lakehouse/warehouse models that make it trustworthy and reproducible.

Haus's Data Platform powers the entire incrementality platform: every causal experiment, every marketing mix model, every dollar of ad spend we help customers reallocate runs on systems this team builds. Under the hood, that platform is a set of distributed backend services - ingestion from dozens of ad-network APIs, customer warehouses, and partner tools; normalization and validation layers; orchestration and observability infrastructure - feeding a BigQuery + dbt warehouse whose models must be correct, because our customers make million-dollar decisions on the outputs.

You will be the senior-most IC on a 6-10 person team, setting technical direction and partnering directly with engineering leadership, product engineering and data science.

What you'll do
  • Architect and build the backend services that power Haus's data platform: high-throughput ingestion from third-party APIs, normalization services, data contracts, and the control plane that orchestrates it all.
  • Solve hard distributed-systems problems in a data context: exactly-once semantics, idempotent reprocessing and backfills, schema evolution without downtime, graceful handling of flaky third-party APIs at scale.
  • Own the lakehouse/warehouse as a product: schema and data-model design, dbt architecture, data quality frameworks, lineage, and cost/performance of BigQuery workloads.
  • Set the engineering bar for the team - testing strategy, API design, code review, observability, CI/CD.
  • Drive architectural decisions across our GCP / BigQuery / dbt / Python stack and drive alignment with downstream engineering and data science teams.
  • Mentor senior engineers and influence the broader org's data strategy.


Qualifications
  • 10+ years of software engineering experience, with deep backend and data expertise.
  • Solid, hands-on experience with a cloud data warehouse or lakehouse (BigQuery preferred; Snowflake, Databricks, or Iceberg-based stacks).
  • Deep SQL/dbt experience: you can design schemas that survive evolution, reason about correctness and performance of complex analytical queries.
  • Expert-level Python experience for building services, not just scripts or notebooks.
  • Track record of Staff-level technical leadership: setting direction across multiple workstreams, writing design docs others build from, and being the engineer the team pulls in on the hardest problems.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication; able to defend technical decisions to engineering, product, and exec stakeholders.


You might be a great fit if
  • You're passionate about data - pipelines, lakehouses, warehouses, the craft of making data trustworthy at scale.
  • You're equally strong at backend engineering: production services, APIs, distributed systems.
  • You're the engineer who reviews both the service PR and the dbt PR, and holds them to the same standard.


This role is probably not for you if
  • Your experience is primarily SQL/dbt transformations, BI, or analytics engineering without significant backend service development.
  • You've operated data tools (Airflow, Fivetran, dbt) as a user, but haven't designed and written the production systems underneath them.
  • You're a strong backend engineer who sees warehouse and data-model work as someone else's job.
Interview process (what we test for)

We interview for both halves of this role, strong backend + data experience. Candidates who are strong in only one half typically don't advance

Bonus points
  • Contributions to open-source data frameworks or tooling (Apache Spark, Beam, Iceberg, Arrow, or similar).
What We Offer

We're a high-performance, low-ego team operating in a fast-moving environment. We care deeply about our customers and expect everyone to take full ownership of their work - this is a place where high expectations fuel even higher growth.

If you thrive in ambiguity, take pride in raising the bar, and want to work alongside top-tier peers who challenge and support you, you'll find unmatched opportunities here. If you're looking for predictability or rigid structure or you prefer order-taking to go-getting, we're probably not the right fit - and that's okay.

We work in small, mission-driven teams that prioritize inclusion, collaboration, and growth over hierarchy or red tape.

Some of our benefits include:
  • Flexible PTO - take time when you need it!
  • Equity - Startup environment with part-ownership in our successes
  • Top of the line health, dental, and vision insurance - multiple plan options so you can pick what fits you best
  • WFH stipend to support the set up you need to be productive
  • Events & Offsites - opportunities to connect and celebrate in real life!
  • Free Lunch - Grab a bite on us when you choose to work from the office (hub locations include SF, NYC and Seattle)
  • New Parent Leave - take time to welcome your newest Hausmate

We value in-person collaboration at Haus and give preference to candidates within commuting distance of our offices in San Francisco, Seattle, and New York City.

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