Principal Software Developer - Data

On-call responsibilities may include coverage during nights and weekends. If applicable, frequency and scheduling will be determined by team needs and communicated accordingly.

About Rocket

Redfin is a technology-driven real estate company with the country's most-visited real estate brokerage website.

RKT), Redfin is creating an integrated homeownership platform from search to close to make the dream of homeownership more affordable and accessible for everyone.

Redfin’s clients can see homes first with on-demand tours, easily apply for a home loan with Rocket Mortgage, and save thousands in fees while working with a top local agent.

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to serve as the chief architect and technical north star for our enterprise data organization.

In this role, you will design and scale a unified data platform that serves as the central nervous system for the entire company.

You will lead the transition to a modern, multi-tenant Data Lakehouse, abstracting away infrastructure complexity for our data engineers while democratizing high-performance, self-serve access for data scientists, machine learning engineers, and AI agents.

You will partner with engineering directors and mentor Staff-level ICs to ensure our architecture scales elegantly securely across domain boundaries.

A proven track record of influencing engineering culture and driving alignment across multiple disparate engineering squads.

What y ou’ll g et Our team members fuel our strategy, innovation and growth, so we ensure the health and well-being of not just you, but your family, too!

About u s Redfin is a technology-driven real estate company with the country's most-visited real estate brokerage website.

RKT), Redfin is creating an integrated homeownership platform from search to close to make the dream of homeownership more affordable and accessible for everyone.

Redfin’s clients can see homes first with on-demand tours, easily apply for a home loan with Rocket Mortgage, and save thousands in fees while working with a top local agent.

Responsibilities

• About the r ole Lakehouse Architecture & Strategy: Design and implement a unified, open-format Data Lakehouse utilizing a Snowflake-managed Apache Iceberg architecture on AWS S3, transitioning the organization away from disjointed legacy data silos.
• Architect and scale resilient, high-throughput ingestion frameworks.
• Design batch, micro-batch, and real-time streaming patterns to seamlessly extract data from diverse transactional databases, third-party APIs, and event logs, landing it reliably into our Bronze storage tier.
• Architect a sovereign, domain-oriented data mesh within a single Snowflake environment.
• Implement delegated domain administration and sophisticated RBAC/Row-Access Policies to ensure strict infosec compliance without impeding cross-domain data sharing.
• Spearhead the deployment of a Universal Semantic Layer on top of our Gold-tier data.
• Standardize modern ELT patterns utilizing dbt, PySpark, and Snowpark to handle petabyte-scale transformations efficiently.
• Drive a rigorous Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) culture using Terraform for all platform provisioning, networking, and security configurations.
• Act as the ultimate technical escalation point for an organization of 60+ engineers.
• Mentor Staff and Senior Individual Contributors, lead architecture design reviews, and establish engineering best practices.
• Act as the primary technical liaison to Principal Architects across the broader organization.
• Define robust integration contracts and connection points between upstream transactional systems, the data platform, and downstream product applications, ensuring a unified, highly interoperable enterprise architecture.
• Deep expertise with modern data movement pipelines (e.g., Fivetran, Airbyte) and high-velocity event-streaming platforms (e.g., Apache Kafka, AWS Kinesis, Snowpipe).
• Experience migrating legacy ETL platforms to modern, compute-optimized ELT architectures is highly preferred.
• Mastery of CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions) and infrastructure provisioning tools (Terraform).

Requirements

• Ensure business logic is defined as code to guarantee metric consistency across BI tools, data apps, and downstream LLM/AI agents.
• Define the technical standards for our Medallion (Bronze, Silver, Gold) data flow.
• 12+ years of software/data engineering experience, with at least 5+ years operating at a Staff, Principal, or Lead Architect level.
• Deep, hands-on architectural experience with AWS (S3, IAM, EKS) and Snowflake.
• Proven experience implementing open table formats, specifically Apache Iceberg.
• Expert understanding of modern data modeling techniques, including Star Schema design for highly optimized analytical reads and dimensional modeling for enterprise semantic layers.
• Extensive experience designing multi-tenant data architectures, implementing complex Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), and managing cross-domain security policies in highly regulated environments.

Preferred

• Advanced proficiency in SQL, Python, and distributed compute engines (Spark, Ray, or native Snowflake compute).
• A strong perspective on the evolving "Modern Data Stack" and the tradeoffs between tight vendor coupling versus open-source flexibility.
• Experience integrating data platforms directly with Machine Learning pipelines and AI workflows.

Pay

The compensation information below is provided in compliance with all applicable job posting disclosure requirements.

The compensation for this position is $234,000.00-$286,000.00.

The information regarding compensation and other benefits included in this paragraph is the company’s current, good faith estimate at the time of posting. [Compensation and benefits are subject to modification from time to time as the Company, in its sole and exclusive discretion, deems appropriate .] The Company may determine during its future reviews of the proposed compensation and benefits provided for this position, that the compensation and benefits for such position should be reduced.

In no event will the Company reduce the compensation for the position to a level below the applicable jurisdictional minimum wage rate for the position.

Benefits

• We go above and beyond to give you the support you need on an individual level and offer all sorts of ways to help you live your best life.
• We are proud to offer eligible team members perks and health benefits that will help you have peace of mind.
• We’ve got your back.
• Check out our full list of Benefits and Perks.
• On-Call Expectations This role may include participation in an on-call rotation to support production systems and ensure service reliability.
• The position may also be eligible for an annual bonus, incentives, and other employment-related benefits including, but not limited to, medical, dental, and vision benefits, 401K retirement plan, and paid-time off.
• More information regarding these benefits and others can be found here .

This job description is an outline of the primary responsibilities of this position and may be modified at the discretion of the c ompany at any time. Decisions related to employment are not based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, military or veteran status or any other characteristic protected by state or federal law. The c ompany provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities in accordance with applicable state and federal laws. Applicants requiring reasonable accommodations in completing the application and/or participating in the application process should contact a member of the Human Resources team, at [email protected] .

Los Angeles County and San Francisco Candidates only: qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment per the Fair Chance Ordinance and the Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring.