Staff Data Engineer

MoonPay

$260K — $274K *
Information Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5+ years of experience designing and evolving large-scale data platforms
  • Expertise in real-time and event-driven architectures, particularly with Kafka or Pub/Sub
  • Proven track record of leading complex initiatives across multiple teams
  • Experience building shared services and engineering patterns for scalable platform capabilities
  • Strong decision-making skills for reliability, scalability, and cost management
  • Ability to navigate between high-level architecture and hands-on tasks
  • Experience influencing engineers on technical standards in regulated environments

Responsibilities

  • Set and evolve the technical direction of the data platform across various processing and governance frameworks
  • Lead cross-team initiatives from architectural decisions through to implementation
  • Design and build core platform capabilities including real-time data pipelines and reusable frameworks
  • Establish golden paths for secure and efficient team processes
  • Enhance platform reliability and efficiency while managing growing data volumes
  • Collaborate with teams to ensure compliance with operational and regulatory standards
  • Guide incremental improvements to reduce complexity and systemic risks
  • Mentor senior engineers through design and code reviews, enhancing team capability

Benefits

  • Competitive salary package
  • Equity package allowing employees ownership in the company
  • Performance-based equity bonuses
  • Moonshot award for exceptional contributions
  • Employer pension contributions from day one
  • Generous employee referral program
  • Flexible time off policy for work-life balance
  • Dedicated birthday leave
  • Enhanced parental leave for family time
  • Hybrid working options for remote or in-office work
  • Commuter benefits for public transport expenses
  • Comprehensive private healthcare benefits
  • Wellness membership covering various fitness and wellness services
  • Unlimited access to the latest AI tools
  • Lunch credits for office days
  • Home office setup allowance for remote workers
  • Additional remote working allowance for utilities
  • Monthly product budget with zero-fee crypto transactions
  • Annual training budget for professional development
  • High Potential Program for structured mentorship and development opportunities
  • Regular remote company offsites for collaboration events
  • Cycle to Work scheme for tax-efficient purchases in Ireland
  • EV salary sacrifice scheme for electric vehicle leasing in the UK
Full Job Description
1. About the Opportunity

This is a hands-on technical leadership role with the opportunity to shape the long-term direction of our data platform.

You will lead the design and evolution of the systems that power analytics, product insights, integrations, and machine learning across MoonPay. Working across teams, you'll solve complex challenges spanning architecture, reliability, scalability, governance, and cost efficiency within a regulated environment.

We're looking for an engineer who can move confidently between setting technical direction and contributing directly to implementation. Your impact will come from evolving and adding new capabilities to our platform, establishing shared engineering patterns, and helping teams make pragmatic decisions that support both immediate delivery and long-term growth.
2. What you will do

As a Staff Data Engineer on our Data Platform team, you'll provide technical leadership across the platform while remaining closely involved in design and delivery.

Day-to-day, you will:
  • Set and evolve the technical direction of our data platform across streaming, batch processing, warehousing, orchestration, governance, and machine learning enablement.
  • Lead the design and delivery of complex, cross-team initiatives from early architectural decisions through to implementation
  • Design and build core platform capabilities, from reliable real-time pipelines, shared tooling, reusable frameworks, and scalable data infrastructure for other teams
  • Establish and champion golden paths that enable teams to build securely, consistently, and efficiently.
  • Improve platform reliability, scalability, performance, and cost efficiency as data volumes and use cases grow.
  • Partner with Security, Compliance, Product, and Engineering teams to ensure our systems meet operational and regulatory requirements.
  • Identify systemic risks, reduce unnecessary complexity, and guide pragmatic, incremental improvements to the platform.
  • Strengthen engineering standards across data modelling, pipeline design, observability, testing, deployment automation, and infrastructure as code.
  • Influence technical priorities and planning by working closely with engineering managers, product managers, and senior technical leaders.
  • Mentor senior engineers and raise technical capability through design reviews, code reviews, documentation, and hands-on collaboration.
What you will be working with/on
  • GCP
  • Pub/Sub and Kafka
  • Apache Beam
  • Bigtable
  • Redis
  • Kubernetes
  • Airflow
  • BigQuery
  • Terraform
  • Python and SQL
  • Real-time and batch processing
  • Data governance, quality, and observability
3. About You

You're a systems thinker who has helped design and scale data platforms used by multiple teams. You're comfortable operating across architecture, hands-on delivery, and organisation-wide technical influence.

You value pragmatic solutions, strong engineering foundations, and quality outcomes over complexity for its own sake.

We're looking for someone who brings:
  • Significant experience designing and evolving large-scale data platforms, distributed and stream processing systems
  • Deep knowledge of real-time and event-driven architectures using technologies such as Kafka or Pub/Sub.
  • A track record of leading complex technical initiatives that span multiple teams or domains.
  • Experience building platform capabilities, shared services, and engineering patterns that other teams can adopt
  • Strong judgement across reliability, scalability, performance, governance, security, and cost management.
  • The ability to move between high-level architectural decisions and hands-on implementation.
  • Experience influencing engineers and stakeholders around shared technical standards and long-term priorities
  • A team-first approach, with a passion for mentoring experienced engineers and raising the technical bar
  • Strong communication skills and the ability to make complex technical decisions clear to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Experience working in a regulated environment, or designing systems with strong compliance and auditability requirements

Experience with our specific technology stack is helpful, but architectural judgement, systems thinking, and technical leadership matter more than expertise in any one tool.

Salary Bandings: $260,000 - $274,000

Benefits & Perks
  • Competitive salary package
  • Equity package: financial freedom starts with our employees, so all employees have ownership at MoonPay
  • Pay-for-performance equity bonus: those who drive outsized outcomes receive outsized rewards
  • Moonshot award: we honor exceptional impact. 10 employees twice a year, each earning a $250,000 equity grant
  • Pension: employer contributions from day one
  • Employee referral program: refer great people, earn 10K in USDC
  • Flexible Time Off: choose when to work and when to switch off
  • 🎂 Birthday leave: take the day off to celebrate you
  • 🍼 Enhanced parental leave: more time with family, no second thought
  • Hybrid working schedule: work fully remotely or from your nearest Moonbase
  • 🚆 Commuter benefits: public transport to and from the office
  • 🩺 Private healthcare benefits: to protect you and your loved ones
  • Wellhub wellness membership: access to gyms, studios, classes, and wellness apps in one membership
  • Unlimited enterprise access to the latest AI tools: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and what's next
  • 🍱 Lunch credit: meals covered on the days you're in the office
  • 🪑 Home office setup allowance: build the home office of your dreams
  • 👛 Remote working allowance: those working fully remotely get a little extra for utilities
  • 🌕 Monthly product budget and zero-fee crypto transactions
  • $1,000 Annual training budget: we support your learning journey
  • High Potential Program: structured development, mentorship, and stretch opportunities
  • Regular remote company offsites: high-impact in-person sessions and hackathons
  • 🚲 (Ireland) Cycle to Work scheme: tax-efficient bike, gear, and safety kit
  • (UK) EV Salary Sacrifice: lease an electric vehicle through pre-tax salary


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