Senior Software Engineer, Data Platform

As a Senior Data Engineer at fal, you will build the data infrastructure that turns our internal systems and external vendor relationships into a clear picture of cost, margin, and performance. Your work spans both edges of our stack - the production infrastructure that runs every model invocation, and the partner APIs and compute vendors whose costs we need to reason about in near real-time.

This role sits at the intersection of software engineering and data engineering. You'll partner closely with Infra to safely instrument core systems, design a low-latency analytical write path, and stand up the ingestion pipelines that unlock cost, margin, and infrastructure analytics for the entire company. You will be a force multiplier - freeing up product engineers and infra to focus on what they do best while giving the data team the foundations it needs to move fast.

• Instrument fal's core infrastructure to capture CPU, GPU, and request-level signals, working alongside our infra team to land changes safely in critical paths.
• Build ingestion pipelines from partner APIs, compute vendors, and internal services into Big Query and a new low-latency analytical store (e.g., Click House).
• Design and operate the ETL backbone that powers cost, margin, and usage analytics with durable, observable pipelines.
• Stand up a lightweight, low-latency write path that the data team and product engineers can target directly for analytics-grade telemetry.
• Partner with infra, data and product engineering to define data contracts and instrumentation standards, and act as the connective tissue between operational systems and the analytics layer.

• 5+ years of experience as a software or data engineer, with a software-engineering-heavy track record (Python, Go, or similar)
• Demonstrated ability to ship code into critical production infrastructure safely, including familiarity with database performance, query patterns, and incident risk.
• Hands-on experience building ingestion pipelines into a warehouse (Big Query, Snowflake, Redshift) and at least one low-latency analytical store (Click House, Druid, Pinot, or similar)
• Strong SQL and working proficiency in dbt and orchestration tooling (Dagster, Airflow, Prefect)
• Track record of partnering across teams (infra, product engineering, data) and translating business questions into durable systems.
• Bias for action and comfort working in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.

• Experience instrumenting GPU/accelerator workloads or other infrastructure-cost-heavy systems.
• Exposure to Fin Ops or infrastructure cost modeling at a cloud-native company.
• Experience with developer-facing API products or platforms.
• Early-stage or fast-scaling startup experience.

• Onsite 5x a week in San Francisco, CA

• Interesting and challenging work
• A lot of learning and growth opportunities
• We are currently hiring in downtown San Francisco.
• We offer relocation assistance to San Francisco.
• Health, dental, and vision insurance (US)