Remote Principal Data Engineer/ Technical Lead Job at Unqork

Unqork empowers enterprises to accelerate growth by rapidly building, testing, and running applications that are designed to be AI-native. Trusted by the world’s largest organizations in highly regulated industries, these applications become more secure over time while significantly reducing technical debt—allowing businesses to focus on innovation rather than maintenance. Unqork’s customers include Goldman Sachs, Marsh, BlackRock, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

At Unqork, we value inclusive and innovative thinkers who boldly challenge the status quo. We encourage you to apply!

The Impact U will make:

We're seeking an experienced Principal Data Engineer/ Technical Lead who is passionate about implementation and capable of writing high-quality application code

In this role, your primary goal is to design and build the services, abstraction layers, and middleware that transform application data needs into specific, high-performance database operations and serve as a dynamic player-coach for our core data engineering squad. As a technical leader, you will directly impact system performance and latency issues that affect our enterprise customers while fostering an inclusive, high-performing engineering culture.

Key Responsibilities

Required Qualifications

• • Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science/ Master’s or above preferred
  • 10+ Years of experience in backend, data, or platform engineering, with a proven track record of solving complex latency and implementation challenges for systems supporting millions of users.
  • 2+ Years of experience in a Technical Lead or Player-Coach capacity, with demonstrated success managing, mentoring, and steering a small team of engineers while remaining hands-on in the codebase.
  • Deep, hands-on proficiency with SQL database systems (PostGress), search systems (e.g. Elastic) AND with MongoDB/Atlas, including complex aggregation pipelines, BSON data modeling, sharding, replica sets, and advanced query performance tuning.
  • Strong experience building Data Access Layers (DAL), custom ODMs, or query translation engines that successfully decouple application logic from underlying storage systems.
  • High proficiency in Node.js or other major backend languages (Python, Java, or Go) to build high-scale, event-driven architectures.
  • Direct experience implementing Redis (caching/TTL strategies) and Atlas Search (Lucene) to optimize data retrieval and discovery.
  • Advanced knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and distributed systems, including experience with containerization (Docker/Kubernetes).
  • Familiarity with SQL-to-NoSQL translation patterns and a background in building internal developer platforms or metadata-driven systems (e.g., no-code/low-code).
  • An AI-forward mindset: You are an avid user of AI tools and are passionate about exploring how AI can automate workflows, enhance creativity, and increase your personal impact.

Why Join Us?

You will have the opportunity to build the foundation that fuels innovation for thousands of developers and enterprise customers. We offer competitive compensation, a generous benefits package, and a collaborative, results-driven culture where your contributions directly shape our product and success.

Compensation, Benefits, & Perks

💻 Work from home with a remote-first community

🏝 Unlimited PTO (and the encouragement to use it)

📝 Student loan payback program

🏥 100% employer-covered medical, dental, and vision options available to you and your dependents

💸 Flexible Spending Account (FSA)

🏠 Monthly stipend toward your WFH setup, vacation, development and more

💰 Employer-sponsored 401(k) with contribution match

🏋🏻‍♀️ Subsidized ClassPass Membership

🍼 Generous Paid Parental Leave

💲 Hiring Ranges:

• Tier 1: $238,600 - $298,300
• Tier 2- $219,700 - $274,700

Unqork employs a market-driven approach to establish compensation ranges. In addition to a base salary, employees may also be eligible to receive a target incentive and company equity in the form of stock options.

An employee’s compensation within the range provided above depends on a variety of factors including, but not limited to, their location, role, skillset, level of experience, and similar peer salaries. As a remote-first company, Unqork incorporates a geographic differential into our compensation structure, depending on the candidate’s location. We utilize a tiered system—Tier 1 and Tier 2—to accurately reflect local market rates and ensure our compensation packages are both fair and competitive.

Our geographic tiers are defined as follows:

• Tier 1: New York Metro, Seattle Metro, San Francisco Bay Area
• Tier 2: All other US and US territory locations

Unqork embraces a culture of security and privacy awareness by consistently safeguarding sensitive information, adhering to company policies, and actively participating in training and initiatives to protect our data and the privacy of our stakeholders.

Unqork is an equal opportunity employer. We will consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, nationality, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, disability or age.

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