Principal Engineer

Overview Principal Data Engineer

We are seeking a Principal Data Engineer to lead the design, evolution, and governance of our data and analytics platforms. This role will be part of the team that is responsible for Data and Analytics engineering with Catalyst Brands. This role will serve as a technical authority and strategic partner across data engineering, analytics, and business stakeholders. The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in modern data architectures, strong hands‑on technical skills, and the ability to influence architecture decisions at scale while enabling teams to deliver high‑quality data solutions efficiently.

• Lead the architecture, design, and implementation of scalable, secure, and high-performance data and analytics platforms across cloud and hybrid environments.
• Define and drive data engineering standards, best practices, and governance frameworks for data ingestion, transformation, modeling, and consumption.
• Partner with Product, Business, Analytics, and Platform teams to translate business requirements into robust data solutions and enterprise data models.
• Architect and oversee development of batch and real‑time data pipelines using modern data stack technologies.
• Ensure data quality, reliability, observability, lineage, and governance across all data assets.
• Perform code reviews and provide technical leadership and mentorship to data engineers; establish engineering excellence and code quality standards.
• Evaluate and implement emerging technologies to enhance analytics capabilities, performance, and scalability.
• Optimize data platforms for cost, performance, and maintainability.
• Drive adoption of Dev Ops/Data Ops practices including CI/CD, automated testing, infrastructure as code, and monitoring.
• Ensure compliance with enterprise data governance, privacy, and regulatory requirements (e.g., GDPR, CCPA, PCI where applicable).
• Develop and maintain architectural documentation, data flow diagrams, and technical standards.

• 10–15+ years of experience in Data Engineering, Analytics Engineering, or Data Platform Architecture, with proven experience designing enterprise‑scale data ecosystems.
• Strong programming skills in PySpark. Experience with tools like Trino, Iceberg/Hudi, Apache Airflow, DBT, Git Lab, CI/CD pipelines, Docker, and Kubernetes.
• Deep expertise in cloud data platforms such as AWS (Redshift, Glue, S3, EMR).
• Strong hands‑on experience with modern data technologies (Snowflake, Spark, Kafka, Airflow, dbt, etc.).
• Advanced proficiency in SQL and programming languages such as PySpark, Python.
• Strong understanding of dimensional modeling, data warehousing concepts, data lakes/lakehouse architectures, and real‑time streaming architectures.
• Experience implementing data governance, metadata management, master data management (MDM), and data quality frameworks.
• Familiarity with BI and analytics tools (Strategy, Tableau, Sigma, Looker, etc.) and supporting semantic layer design.
• Experience leading architectural decisions and influencing cross‑functional technical direction.
• Strong knowledge of distributed systems, performance optimization, and scalable system design.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills; ability to articulate complex technical solutions to both technical and non‑technical audiences.
• Demonstrated leadership in mentoring engineers and driving engineering best practices.
• Familiarity of implementing AI‑based solutions within Data and Analytics platforms.

• Enjoy a rewarding career at Catalyst, where we offer a competitive benefits package, a vibrant work environment, and the opportunity to make a difference with America's most iconic retail brands.
• Generous benefits:
  Medical/dental/vision insurance starting on day one, term life insurance, paid vacation/holidays, 401(k) Savings Plan with company match, and an associate discount on merchandise across all Catalyst Brands.
• Opportunities for growth and development:
  We are committed to helping our employees grow their careers and develop their skills. We offer a variety of training and development programs, as well as opportunities for…