# Staff Software Engineer, Foundations

**Company:** [Vanta](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/vanta)
**Location:** Remote
**Role:** Data Engineering
**Experience:** 7+ years
**Skills:** Kafka, Postgres, MongoDB, Redis, AWS, TypeScript, Node.js, S3, Distributed Systems, Data Pipelines, Event Queuing, Schema Versioning, Query Planning, Connection Pooling, Online Schema Change
**Posted:** 2026-08-24

> Leads the migration and evolution of Vanta’s multi-tenant data platform, designing highly reliable ingestion, storage, and query systems at terabyte scale. The role requires staff-level distributed-systems expertise, Kafka and database fluency, and the ability to drive architecture across teams.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Lead migration of Vanta’s resource data model from a Mongo-centric architecture to a schema-aware, Postgres-backed solution while maintaining backward compatibility and customer integrations.
- Drive cross-team technical solutions for platform dependencies.
- Design for correctness under eventual consistency, including idempotent session handling, conditional writes, reconciliation, and explicit backpressure.
- Design and evolve high-throughput data ingestion and pipeline architecture for terabyte-scale distributed data streams.
- Expand the Query API into a production platform with schema versioning, joins, exports, tenant isolation, and predictable latency.
- Build externally auditable data infrastructure for compliance evidence.
- Diagnose production-scale issues including hot partitions, unbounded fan-out, and online rewrites of continuously written tables.
- Set architectural direction for Kafka, event queuing, Redis, Postgres, and MongoDB.
- Mentor senior engineers through design reviews, architectural guidance, and hands-on contributions.
- Champion reliability, observability, and operational excellence.
- Use AI tools responsibly to improve engineering efficiency and impact.

## Requirements
- Proven experience leading platform migrations while maintaining backward compatibility and availability.
- Strong command of Kafka or equivalent streaming and queuing infrastructure, including partitioning, consumer groups, redelivery, and idempotency.
- Deep experience with distributed systems and data pipeline engineering at enterprise scale.
- Experience designing and operating terabyte-scale ingestion and high-throughput event-processing systems.
- Fluency in relational and document data modeling at scale, particularly Postgres and MongoDB.
- Experience with query planning, connection pooling, and online schema changes on large continuously written tables.
- Experience defining multi-quarter technical roadmaps and delivering them with engineering leadership.
- Solid AWS fundamentals.
- Professional experience with TypeScript and Node.js.
- Ability to communicate complex systems tradeoffs to technical and non-technical audiences.
- Curiosity and sound judgment in applying AI to engineering work.

## Compensation & Benefits
- Industry-competitive salary and equity.
- Medical, dental, and vision benefits with dependent coverage fully covered.
- Pension contribution.
- 16 weeks of paid parental leave for all new parents.
- Health and wellness stipend.
- Remote workspace, internet, and cellphone stipends.
- Flexible work hours and location.
- 21 days of vacation time and 80 hours of sick leave.
- 11 company-paid holidays.
- Virtual team-building activities, lunch and learns, and company-wide events.

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