Senior Software Engineer, Data Acquisition

Note for all engineering roles: with the rise of fake applicants and AI-enabled candidate fraud, we have built in additional measures throughout the process to identify such candidates and remove them.

About Us

People Data Labs (PDL) is the provider of people and company data. We do the heavy lifting of data collection and standardization so our customers can focus on building and scaling innovative, compliant data solutions. Our sole focus is on building the best data available by integrating thousands of compliantly sourced datasets into a single, developer-friendly source of truth. Leading companies across the world use PDL’s workforce data to enrich recruiting platforms, power AI models, create custom audiences, and more.

We are looking for individuals who can balance extreme ownership with a “one-team, one-dream” mindset. Our customers are trying to solve complex problems, and we only help them achieve their goals as a team. Our Data Engineering & Acquisition Team ensures our customers have standardized and high quality data to build upon.

You will be crucial in accelerating our efforts to build standalone data products that enable data teams and independent developers to create innovative solutions at massive scale. In this role, you will be working with a team to continuously improve our existing datasets as well as pursuing new ones. If you are looking to be part of a team discovering the next frontier of data-as-a-service (DaaS) with a high level of autonomy and opportunity for direct contributions, this might be the role for you. We like our engineers to be thoughtful, quirky, and willing to fearlessly try new things. Failure is embraced at PDL as long as we continue to learn and grow from it.

What You Get to Do

Contribute to the architecture and improvement of our data acquisition and processing platform, increasing reliability, throughput, and observability

Use and develop web crawling technologies to capture and catalog data on the internet

Build, operate, and evolve large-scale distributed systems that collect, process, and deliver data from across the web

Design and develop backend services that manage distributed job orchestration, data pipelines, and large-scale asynchronous workloads

Structure and model captured data, ensuring high quality and consistency across datasets

Continuously improve the speed, scalability, and fault-tolerance of our ingestion systems

Partner with data product and engineering teams to design and implement new data products powered by the data you help collect, and enhance and improve upon existing products

Learn and apply domain-specific knowledge in web crawling and data acquisition, with mentorship from experienced teammates and access to existing systems

The Technical Chops You’ll Need

7+ years of professional experience building or operating backend or infrastructure systems at scale

Solid programming experience in Python, Go, Rust, or similar, including experience with async / await, coroutines, or concurrency frameworks

Strong grasp of software architecture and backend fundamentals; you can reason clearly about concurrency, scalability, and fault tolerance

Solid understanding of browser rendering pipeline, web application architecture (auth, cookies, http request / response)

Familiarity with network architecture and debugging (HTTP, DNS, proxies, packet capture and analysis)

Solid understanding of distributed systems concepts: parallelism, asynchronous programming, backpressure, and message-driven design

Experience designing or maintaining resilient data ingestion, API integration, or ETL systems

Proficiency with Linux / Unix command-line tools and system resource management

Familiarity with message queues, orchestration, and distributed task systems (Kafka, SQS, Airflow, etc.)

Experience evaluating and monitoring data quality, ensuring consistency, completeness, and reliability across releases

People Thrive Here Who Can

Work independently in a fast-paced, remote-first environment, proactively unblocking themselves and collaborating asynchronously

Communicate clearly and thoughtfully in writing (Slack, docs, design proposals)

Write and maintain technical design documents, including pipeline design, schema design, and data flow diagrams

Scope and break down complex projects into deliverable milestones, and communicate progress, risks, and blockers effectively

Balance pragmatism with craftsmanship, shipping reliable systems while continuously improving them

Some Nice To Haves

Degree in a quantitative field such as computer science, mathematics, or engineering

Experience as a Red Teamer

Experience working on large-scale data ingestion, crawling, or indexing systems

Experience with Apache Spark, Databricks, or other distributed data platforms

Experience with streaming data systems (Kafka, Pub/Sub, Spark Streaming, etc.)

Proficiency with SQL and data warehousing (Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, or similar)

Experience with cloud platforms (AWS preferred, GCP or Azure also great)

Understanding of modern data storage and design patterns (parquet, Delta Lake, partitioning, incremental updates)

Knowledge of modern data design and storage patterns (e.g., incremental updating, partitioning and segmentation, rebuilds and backfills)

Experience building and maintaining data pipelines on modern big-data or cloud platforms (Databricks, Spark, or equivalent)

Comp: $160K - $200K

Our Benefits

Stock

401k

Competitive Salaries

Unlimited paid time off

Medical, dental, & vision insurance

Health, fitness, and office stipends

The permanent ability to work wherever and however you want

Why People Data Labs?

Great People make great teams. It is as simple and elegant as that. We believe in building highly functional, energetic, and engaging teams to serve our customers. People, Customers, Shareholders, in that order, sets us up for success and delivering on our promises.

If all of that sounds good to you, we can’t wait to hear from you and build something amazing together!

Check out our latest company kickoff video to get a taste of our company culture:

People Data Labs does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, color, religion, age, national origin, marital status, disability, veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other reason prohibited by law in provision of employment opportunities and benefits.

Qualified Applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for Employment in accordance with the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act.

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