Lead/Staff Data Platform Engineer

As a Lead/Staff Data Platform Engineer at Gorilla, you'll be responsible for leading the technical vision of our data platform while influencing architectural decisions. Your role includes designing and evolving platform services, driving initiatives across teams, and mentoring engineers to improve their practices. Additionally, you will ensure operational excellence by automating infrastructure and monitoring key systems, ensuring the platform’s reliability and performance.

To qualify for the Lead/Staff Data Platform Engineer position at Gorilla, you should have proven experience in designing and scaling data platforms, strong Python skills, and a solid understanding of AWS services like Lambda and S3. Experience with Terraform and infrastructure-as-code practices is crucial, along with familiarity with tools such as Airflow or DBT. Additionally, having insights into distributed computing concepts and a proactive, collaborative mindset is essential.

In the role of Lead/Staff Data Platform Engineer at Gorilla, you'll work with modern tooling including Terraform and Docker, alongside cloud-native technologies. Your expertise will also encompass CI/CD practices and observability techniques. Familiarity with advanced data platforms such as Snowflake and Databricks will be valuable, as will skills in container orchestration using Kubernetes.

The Lead/Staff Data Platform Engineer at Gorilla plays a crucial role in driving cross-team initiatives by helping teams adopt and scale platform capabilities. You will collaborate closely with stakeholders from various departments, identify gaps in the platform, and design long-term solutions to facilitate product innovation, all while maintaining a focus on reliability and security.

At Gorilla, the work culture for a Lead/Staff Data Platform Engineer is one of collaboration and innovation. You are encouraged to foster the technical growth of your team members while also pursuing your own leadership skills. The environment is dynamic, with a strong focus on operational excellence and continuous improvement, enabling you to contribute to significant advancements in the energy sector.

When answering this question, highlight specific projects where you’ve designed data platforms, focusing on the technologies you utilized, the challenges you faced, and how you achieved scalability and performance. Emphasize your problem-solving skills and decision-making process.

In responding to this question, outline your strategies for maintaining platform reliability, such as implementing monitoring systems, automating infrastructure, and conducting regular performance reviews. Mention how you lead incident response and root cause analysis efforts.

Discuss your mentoring philosophy, including how you assess skill levels, set goals, and provide feedback. Share examples of how you’ve helped junior engineers grow in their roles and improve their technical capabilities.

Be ready to discuss the cloud-native technologies you've worked with, particularly those relevant to AWS, including services like Lambda and ECS. Provide examples of how you’ve implemented these technologies in real projects, focusing on outcomes.

Talk about the methods you use to keep your knowledge current, such as following industry blogs, participating in online courses, attending workshops, and engaging with the tech community. Highlight any recent trends or technologies that have influenced your work.

When answering, share a specific instance where you led a cross-team project. Discuss your role, the teams involved, the goals of the initiative, and the impact it had on the organization. Highlight your leadership skills in aligning different stakeholders.

Emphasize how automation enhances efficiency in your work. Provide examples of processes you've automated, such as CI/CD pipelines or infrastructure provisioning, and how this has led to greater reliability and reduced downtime.

Detail your hands-on experience with infrastructure-as-code tools, particularly Terraform, explaining how you’ve utilized them to streamline deployments, improve tracking, and enforce consistency in environments.

Discuss your understanding of data security best practices, especially in regulated industries. Mention specific strategies you implement to ensure data governance, including access controls, encryption, and regular audits.

Explain your time management and prioritization techniques. Provide examples of how you've balanced multiple projects, kept communication open, and ensured that all team objectives were met.