What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Software Engineer, Data Platform position at Harnham?
Senior / Staff Data Platform Engineer
Location: Costa Mesa, CA (Hybrid — minimum 3 days onsite)
Employment Type: Full-Time
Clearance Requirement: U.S. Citizen or Green Card holder only
About the Role
This role is responsible for building and scaling the core data platform that powers mission‑critical hardware and manufacturing operations. The work is highly technical, systems‑oriented, and focused on real‑time data processing, large‑scale reliability, and high‑impact architectural ownership.
This is not an analytics role — it is a foundational engineering position owning the infrastructure that supports real‑world, high‑throughput hardware systems.
What You’ll Work On
This year’s major initiatives include:
- Standing up a large‑scale manufacturing facility in Ohio
- Surfacing real‑time health metrics across production lines
- Delivering sub‑minute latency telemetry to factory floor displays
- Ensuring high‑reliability systems that must not go down
The scope includes:
- Data lake architecture & modernization
- Real‑time streaming pipelines
- Orchestration frameworks
- Backend services built on the data platform
- Secure deployments in constrained or controlled environments
The role requires balancing big‑picture architecture with practical engineering tradeoffs across multiple environments.
Ownership & Impact
- Lead architecture and implementation of platform services
- Influence platform roadmap and long‑term strategy
- Own reliability, observability, SLAs, and system performance
- Serve as a senior technical partner to unlock engineering scale
- At Staff level: full platform ownership and technical leadership
What the Day‑to‑Day Looks Like
- ~60% hands‑on development
- ~40% architecture, design reviews, cross‑team alignment, and planning
6–12 Month Success Measures
- Reduced bottlenecks in architectural decision‑making
- Improved reliability and scalability across the data platform
- Successful deployment of real‑time manufacturing telemetry
- Clear ownership of critical platform components
- Strong technical partnership across engineering teams
Biggest Technical Challenge
This role must help eliminate key architectural bottlenecks by becoming a trusted technical owner who accelerates decision‑making and platform evolution.
Candidate Profile
Experience Level
- Senior: 6 years
- Staff: 8–10 years
- Blend of software engineering data platform development
- Experience evolving and operating data lakes
Technical Skills (Must‑Have)
- Python
- SQL
- Java or Scala
- Spark
- Kafka or Flink
- Strong systems fundamentals and distributed architecture expertise
Nice‑to‑Have
- Experience in secure or restricted environments
- Infrastructure-as-Code experience
- Exposure to hardware or physical system data
Top Signals of Fit
- Built internal platforms or tooling
- Owned streaming system design and implementation
- Made architectural decisions at platform scale
- Improved reliability, performance, or scalability
Compensation
- Senior Level: ~$170,000–$180,000 base
- Staff Level: Typically $200k base depending on experience
- No bonus
- Equity in the form of RSUs (4-year grant, 1-year cliff)
- Relocation support available depending on distance
Interview Process
- SQL Screening (Virtual)
- Optional Culture Conversation (Virtual)
- Onsite Interviews:Data Modeling
- System Design / “Horsepower”
- Python Pairing
- Cross‑functional Technical Partner Interview
Salary : $170,000 - $200,000