What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Data Platform Engineer position at BCforward?
**Presently we are unable to sponsor and request applicants to apply who are authorized to work without sponsorship**
Role: Senior Data Platform Engineer
Location: Jersey City, NJ – Onsite
Role Summary
You will design, build, tune, and operate the services and infrastructure behind our low-latency platform. You’ll own performance end to end, from Cassandra data models and compaction strategy to the AWS services and Java microservices on top. You’ll work closely with application teams and stakeholders to make sure the platform meets agreed SLAs.
Key Responsibilities
- Design and evolve the platform’s data layer on Apache Cassandra, including query-driven data modeling, schema design, and capacity planning.
- Tune Cassandra for performance and stability, including compaction strategy optimization, read/write path tuning, and troubleshooting.
- Deliver system design, application development, testing, and operational stability for services running on AWS.
- Build and maintain backend microservices using Java and Spring Boot, with REST and gRPC APIs.
- Build and support data pipelines and ETL processes using Apache Kafka and Apache Spark.
- Deploy and operate workloads on AWS, primarily Amazon ECS and AWS Lambda, Glue, S3, as well as containerized workloads on Kubernetes.
- Define and manage infrastructure as code using Terraform.
- Monitor, analyze, and improve P50/P99 latency; run load and performance tests; and drive root-cause analysis for regressions.
- Partner with customers and internal consumers to understand requirements and deliver against performance expectations.
- Contribute to platform reliability and security through CI/CD, observability, alerting, runbooks, resiliency practices, and incident response.
- Use AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Claude, GitHub Copilot) to improve productivity and code quality.
Required Qualifications
- Formal training or certification in software engineering concepts, plus 5 years of applied experience.
- Strong platform engineering background, with a track record of supporting or building production systems with strict performance requirements.
- Deep hands-on experience with Cassandra: data modeling, performance tuning, and compaction optimization.
- Hands-on experience delivering system design, application development, testing, and operational stability within AWS, including Amazon ECS and AWS Lambda.
- Advanced proficiency in Java and/or Python.
- Experience building services with Spring Boot and gRPC APIs.
- Expert-level experience with data engineering technologies and tools such as Apache Kafka, Apache Spark, Cassandra, and ETL processes.
- Experience with distributed systems, microservices, Kubernetes, and containers.
- Experience with Terraform and infrastructure-as-code practices.
- Advanced understanding of agile methodologies and modern engineering practices, including CI/CD, application resiliency, and security.
- Demonstrated proficiency in software applications and technical processes within a technical discipline (e.g., cloud, AI/ML).
- Demonstrated experience meeting strict latency and SLA targets and delivering against customer expectations.
- Experience using or supporting low-latency platforms (strongly preferred).
- Experience with AI coding assistants such as Claude or Copilot.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with OLAP databases.
- Experience with GCP APIs.
- Prior experience supporting high-performance, low-latency systems in production.