Staff Backend Software Eng. - Data Platform

This is a remote position; however, the candidate must reside within 30 miles of one of the following locations: Portland, ME; Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Dallas, TX; San Francisco Bay Area, CA; and Seattle/WA.

About the Team/Role

WEX is an innovative global commerce platform and payments technology company looking to forge the way in a rapidly changing environment, to simplify the business of doing business for customers, freeing them to spend more time, with less worry, on the things they love and care about. We are journeying to build a consistent world-class user experience across our products and services and leverage customer-focused innovations across all our strategic initiatives, including big data, AI, and Risk.

Position Summary

As a Staff Software Engineer, you will be a key technical leader responsible for the design, implementation, and maintenance of WEX's data lake platform. This role is central to our vision of creating a unified, scalable, and intelligent data infrastructure that supports both traditional analytics and next-generation AI/ML technologies.

You will drive the technical development of the platform, ensuring our systems, services, and tools are built with a strong focus on security, quality, reliability, performance, and scalability. This position requires a technically deep and hands-on leader who can balance near-term execution with long-term architectural health.

You will work closely with other senior engineers and teams across the organization, including Data & Analytics and Information Security, to understand business needs and guide the design, development, and productionalization of our data platform.

This is a fantastic opportunity for a highly motivated and experienced engineer to make a real business impact by solving large-scale, complex problems in a fast-growing tech company. We are looking for an individual who is passionate about building robust data infrastructure and can mentor the next generation of engineers.

How you’ll make an impact

Responsibilities

• Platform Strategy & Leadership: Lead the technical vision, architecture, and strategy for the Data Lake platform. Drive the development roadmap to deliver a platform that meets both near-term business needs and long-term strategic goals.

• Technical Execution & Innovation: Design and lead the implementation of our data lake platform and services. Challenge the status quo, championing innovative technical solutions that leverage data, AI, and modern engineering practices.

• Cross-Functional Partnership: Partner closely with solutions architecture, product, and engineering teams to deeply understand business needs and design effective solutions. Collaborate with information security to ensure data privacy and access controls are a core part of the platform's design.

• Mentorship & Team Development: Serve as a technical mentor to engineers, providing guidance on engineering principles, best practices, and skills. Foster a culture of continuous learning, innovation, and accountability for quality results.

• Stakeholder Communication: Report on the status of development, quality, and system performance to management and partners. Advise senior leadership on complex technical initiatives and drive projects to achieve defined OKRs.

Experience you’ll bring

Experience: 10+ years of experience in software design and development, with a focus on building large-scale, distributed systems.

Technical Depth:

• Strong hands-on experience in software development, architecture, deployment, and production operations, preferably with Java / J2EE (Spring/Spring Boot).

• Proficiency in languages like Python is highly desirable.

• Deep expertise in building and operating Big Data platforms and large-scale data lakes.

• Experience with Data Lakehouse formats such as Apache Iceberg, Apache Hudi, or Delta Lake is a significant plus.

• Strong understanding of modern data processing tools and services (e.g., Spark, AWS Glue, dbt, Apache Polaris).

Cloud & Infrastructure:

• Extensive experience with cloud architecture and services, including AWS (S3, EMR, Kubernetes, Lambda) and Azure.

• Deep understanding of CI/CD automation, modern development tools, and frameworks.

Leadership & Soft Skills:

• Proven ability to lead and guide engineering teams, acting as a technical mentor and thought leader.

• Excellent analytical skills with a proven ability to identify and resolve complex technical problems.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with a philosophy of continuous improvement.

Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field. A higher degree is a plus.

Desired Attributes: Platform Engineering Focus

We are specifically seeking candidates who have a strong background in building and operating platforms, frameworks, and foundational services for data teams. The ideal engineer will have demonstrably experience in:

• Framework Development: Creating reusable libraries, REST APIs, and serv