Principal Data Engineer/ Technical Lead

Role Overview

Unqork is seeking a Principal Data Engineer / Technical Lead to design and build high-performance data services and abstractions. You will act as a player-coach for a core data engineering squad (3–5 engineers), directly improving system performance and latency for enterprise customers.

Responsibilities

• Player-coach leadership: Provide technical direction, architectural guidance, and daily mentorship to a small engineering team.
• Technical execution: Lead thoughtful code reviews and foster professional growth.
• Data abstraction & query translation:
  • Design and implement advanced Data Access Layers (DAL) and custom ODMs.
  • Translate SQL-like queries into high-performance MongoDB BSON operations and aggregation pipelines.
• Storage-agnostic architecture: Build middleware so business logic remains independent of storage mechanisms.
• MongoDB architecture & scaling: Architect and scale a multi-tenant, secure MongoDB ecosystem.
• Performance optimization:
  • Improve availability.
  • Perform deep-dive execution plan analysis (e.g., IXSCAN vs. COLLSCAN) for query tuning.
• Hybrid data architectures: Plan architectures supporting operational, transactional, and analytical schemas.
• Microservices & libraries: Use Node.js/JavaScript to build robust microservices (often GraphQL) and internal libraries supporting metadata-driven patterns in Unqork’s no-code runtime.
• Schema & integrity: Design schemas and declarative models enabling non-technical users to build complex logic without sacrificing data integrity/performance.
• Data pipelines: Architect real-time and batch pipelines with Apache Kafka and Spark.
• Enterprise integration: Partner with Platform/Backend teams to standardize data interaction patterns and deliver high-scale API-driven performance.
• Product alignment: Work with Product Management to translate business requirements into technical specifications and help shape the roadmap.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in backend, data, or platform engineering; proven success solving complex latency and implementation problems at scale.
• 2+ years in a Technical Lead or player-coach capacity, with hands-on mentorship and team leadership.
• Deep, hands-on proficiency with:
  • SQL databases (listed: PostGress)
  • Search systems (e.g., Elastic)
  • MongoDB / MongoDB Atlas, including aggregation pipelines, BSON data modeling, sharding, replica sets, and advanced query tuning.
• Strong experience building DAL, custom ODMs, or query translation engines that decouple application logic from storage.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science; Master’s preferred.

Tags / Focus Areas

Player-coach technical leadership, high-performance data platforms, MongoDB query and performance tuning, storage-agnostic data access, and enterprise data pipelines.