Senior Data Platform Engineer

About Medium: Medium is one of the world’s most influential and trusted open-writing ecosystems, connecting millions of global readers with deeply insightful human ideas that matter. We are a small, highly dedicated team that cares profoundly about the craft of software engineering, intellectual curiosity, and building an open publishing platform that lasts. Operating with a lean cross-functional model, we make technical decisions efficiently, iterate fast, and take our work seriously without taking ourselves too seriously—championing a digital landscape that empowers writers to share meaningful perspectives globally.

Position Overview

We are seeking a highly autonomous, generalist-minded, and code-proficient Senior Data Platform Engineer to design, evolve, and operate Medium’s core data architecture under a permanent, full-time 100% remote layout open within the United States. In this multi-disciplinary infrastructure seat, you will sit at the unique intersection of data architecture, DevOps primitives, reliability engineering (SRE), and backend development. Shifting completely away from routine non-regulated administrative transcription entry logs, basic website visual modifications, or standalone copywriting tasks, you will run an active high-throughput distributed ingestion layer, complex cloud migration, and data observability automation laboratory. Your technical ownership will directly guarantee that downstream engineers and data scientists can reliably deploy personalized content recommendations, process writer subscription payments seamlessly, and compile real-time analytics dashboards. This position requires a systems authority with 4–6 years of infrastructure history who maps data pipelines fluidly natively using Python Scripting, SQL, and cloud services, approaches legacy tech debt with structural curiosity, and operates effectively without an embedded product manager layer.

Key Responsibilities

• Data Platform Infrastructure Governance: Architect, implement, and maintain the foundational data ingestion, storage, and processing pipelines that power Medium’s global product ecosystem natively utilizing Python Scripting and infrastructure primitives.
• Observability & Reliability Engineering: Identify architecture risks, instrument end-to-end telemetry monitoring metrics, eliminate processing toil, and maximize data service uptime under disciplined SRE frameworks.
• Tooling and Orchestration Customization: Write, inspect, and maintain modular Python-based internal automation tools, custom data quality validations, and sequential workflow orchestration modules.
• Legacy Tech Debt Transformation: Lead pragmatic migration roadmaps, moving aging or end-of-life storage grids towards modern, maintainable alternatives (such as Snowflake and Kubernetes architectures).
• Downstream Product Partnership: Bring a proactive product mindset to platform engineering, partnering next to internal data scientists and business analysts to translate technical capabilities into trustworthy self-serve utilities.
• Agile DevOps Continuous Delivery: Incorporate automated continuous integration pipelines, standardized alerting trees, configuration runbooks, and secure code-review standards as first-class concerns.
• Technical Mentorship & Culture: Mentor engineering teammates, optimize internal documentation ergonomics, and champion a psychological safe, highly collaborative team culture.
• Corporate Synchronization: Participate in Medium’s twice-yearly, in-person collaborative team offsites hosted at changing regional locations across the United States.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• A minimum of 4–6 years of proven, successful professional software development history operating as a Senior Data Platform Engineer, DevOps Architect, Site Reliability Engineer (SRE), Backend Developer, or closely matching technical infrastructure capacity.
• Expert Python Ecosystem Command: Absolute, production-grade mastery writing modular, clean code inside Python Scripting environments, with an capability to demonstrate technical logic fluently during evaluations.
• Advanced operational literacy across the modern data stack—including big data warehousing frameworks (such as Snowflake), transformation tools (such as dbt), or cloud compute ecosystems (specifically AWS platform nodes).
• Demonstrated experience taking an ambiguous, ill-defined infrastructure problem and driving it independently towards a systematic solution without relying on pre-existing manuals or playbooks.
• Outstanding written, verbal, and textual communication strengths in English, with an established background advocating for architectural choices while remaining genuinely open to better engineering inputs.
• Location Context: Position operates under remote guidelines open exclusively to qualified database and system infrastructure specialists residing permanently within the United States.

Preferred Strategic Indicators (Nice to Have)

• Prior platform background configuring high-concurrency container containers using Kubernetes, maintaining machine learning (ML) pipeline infrastructures, or building custom data quality trackers.
• Proven comfort operating without a dedicated PM layer, indicating direct professional experience managing platform direction, timelines, and stakeholder requirements independently.
• Experience leveraging frontier generative AI capabilities to improve development leverage, team reach, and automated script output efficiency.
• A deep personal passion for Medium’s primary core mission, with a history of reading or writing on the platform natively.

What We Offer

• Top-Tier US Data Engineering Compensation Matrix: A highly competitive annual base salary scale of $165,000 - $205,000 USD calibrated precisely to your technical pedigree and system design trajectory, supplemented by dedicated bonus features.
• 100% remote workspace infrastructure autonomy anywhere within the United States, allowing you to operate within a fully distributed global framework spanning the US and France.
• Category-Defining Platform Footprint: Elite professional growth milestones achieved by transforming the underlying big data foundations used to distribute high-conviction ideas to millions of unique readers daily.
• Comprehensive health preservation benefits, featuring 100% company-covered healthcare premiums for employees and 80% coverage for dependents.
• Access to a generous parental leave policy, specialized mental health counseling support through Spring Health (or Rula/Kaiser networks), financial wellness coaching via Northstar, comprehensive remote stipends (for co-working spaces, professional growth, home internet, and a one-time home-office setup bonus), an unlimited Paid Time Off (PTO) policy combined with standard company holidays, and a discounted premium Medium membership.