Principal Data Engineer, People Data
Manager
Senior
3d Design Tools
Apache Airflow
Big Data
Bigdata
Cloud Data Warehouse
Cloud Operations
Cloud Platform
Cloud Platforms
Data
Data Analysis
Data Analytics
Data Architecture
Data Build Tool
Data Engineer
Data Engineering
Data Integration
Data Lake
Data Lakehouse
Data Management
Data Modeling
Data Operations
Data Pipeline
Data Pipelines
Data Platform
Data Processing
Data Warehouse
Data Warehousing
Database
Databases
Dataops
Engineer
Engineering
ETL
Informatica
Snowflake
SQL
Technical Lead
Job Description
As a Principal Data Engineer, People Data at Okta, you will architect and deliver scalable data solutions that power candidate and employee information across the organization. This hybrid role in Chicago, IL is built for engineers who want to lead complex initiatives, raise the technical bar, and ensure data remains available, accurate, and trustworthy through every stage of the employee lifecycle.
Compensation: USD 197,000 - 270,600 per year. Experience: 10+ years in data engineering.
What you’ll do
- Design, build, and evolve high-scale data solutions that serve as the organization’s reference architecture and make data access simpler across teams.
- Create data quality frameworks, monitoring, anomaly detection, and alerting, including governance, lineage tracking, and change management rigor for externally reported numbers.
- Drive consistent data modeling patterns, naming conventions, documentation norms, and metric governance standards across the data organization.
- Lead cross-functional technical initiatives across data verticals to accelerate delivery and harden data systems.
- Make sound technical decisions in ambiguous situations, balancing short-term execution with long-term infrastructure investment.
- Champion Data Contracts by implementing data contracts and schema evolution practices for reliable integration across global product teams.
- Mentor and scale by raising the technical bar through mentoring senior engineers, leading cross-functional task forces, and fostering engineering excellence and data-driven decision making.
- Stay current with the data landscape by adopting and advocating for emerging technologies and practices to shape the team’s long-term technical direction.
What you’ll bring
- 10+ years in a data engineering role, with proven experience in a senior or lead capacity. Federal government compliance and security requirements experience is highly desirable.
- Expert-level experience with SQL, ETL/ELT tools such as Airflow and dbt, and MPP databases including Snowflake and Redshift.
- Extensive hands-on experience with AWS services: S3, Lambda, EMR, ECR, EKS.
- Deep HR data expertise, including candidate lifecycle, employee records, compensation, and organizational data.
- Experience designing data models for recruiting analytics, engagement signals, and workforce planning metrics.
- Familiarity with Workday data structures is a bonus.
- Experience building and maintaining batch and real-time pipelines using technologies like Spark and Kafka.
- Deep experience with modern lakehouse and warehouse architectures (including Databricks and Snowflake) and modern file formats (Iceberg, Delta).
- Demonstrated ability to integrate AI tools to optimize or redesign workflows and drive measurable impact such as efficiency gains and quality improvements.
- Track record of hands-on collaboration with Data Science, Business, and Product teams.
Technologies you’ll work with
- SQL, Airflow, dbt
- Snowflake, Redshift
- AWS S3, AWS Lambda, AWS EMR, AWS ECR, AWS EKS
- Spark, Kafka
- Databricks, Iceberg, Delta
The Okta Experience
- Supporting Your Well-Being
- Driving Social Impact
- Developing Talent and Fostering Connection + Community
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