Tala

Senior Data Engineer

Actively hiring, first seen by us 59 minutes ago

Pay: USD 130,000–200,000/year — pay source
Salary 130,000 – 200,000 USD per year Our vision is to build a new financial ecosystem where everyone can participate on equal footing and access the tools they need to be financially healthy. We strongly believe that inclusion fosters innovation and we’re proud to have a diverse global team that represents a multitude of backgrounds, cultures, and experience. We hire talented people regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
Read the full posting
Work setting: Remote — work setting source
Work setup in the employer’s posting: remote
From the employer’s posting
Employment: Full-time — employment source
Employment type Full-time
Employment type in the employer’s posting: Full-time
From the employer’s posting

What you’ll work on

Full posting

You will work across this ecosystem to ensure data is accurate, available, and delivered with minimal latency.
Improve pipeline performance and scalability: Identify and implement improvements to reduce latency, optimize infrastructure costs, and support growing data volumes across markets.
Build and evolve data infrastructure: Onboard new data sources, tables, and markets while managing schema evolution and ensuring compatibility across systems.

From the employer’s posting

In this individual contributor role, you will take ownership of Tala's data synchronization pipelines, ensuring that data from our market-level databases is reliably captured, processed, and delivered to Snowflake for downstream analytics and business use. Our data infrastructure uses a modern AWS-based architecture, including AWS Database Migration Service (DMS), Kafka, Spark Structured Streaming, Apache Iceberg, Amazon S3, and Snowflake. You will work across this ecosystem to ensure data is accurate, available, and delivered with minimal latency. Beyond maintaining existing pipelines, you will identify opportunities to improve performance, scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency. You will also establish and monitor service level objectives (SLOs), strengthen testing and deployment practices, and lead root cause analysis when issues arise.

Own and operate data pipelines: Maintain and improve Tala's change data capture (CDC) and data synchronization infrastructure, ensuring accurate and timely delivery of data from market-level databases into Snowflake. Improve pipeline performance and scalability: Identify and implement improvements to reduce latency, optimize infrastructure costs, and support growing data volumes across markets. Build and evolve data infrastructure: Onboard new data sources, tables, and markets while managing schema evolution and ensuring compatibility across systems.

Improve pipeline performance and scalability: Identify and implement improvements to reduce latency, optimize infrastructure costs, and support growing data volumes across markets. Build and evolve data infrastructure: Onboard new data sources, tables, and markets while managing schema evolution and ensuring compatibility across systems. Drive reliability and data quality: Establish service level objectives (SLOs), implement monitoring and alerting, and build automated data quality checks to ensure data remains accurate and available.

What you’ll bring

All qualifications

Core experience

4+ years of experience in backend engineering or data engineering, ideally supporting consumer-scale applications.
Experience with Trino or Presto.
Proven experience independently building, operating, and improving production-grade data pipelines.
Experience with Kubernetes and containerized applications.
Hands-on experience with change data capture (CDC) and stream processing technologies such as Kafka, Amazon MSK, AWS DMS, or comparable tools.
Familiarity with AWS Glue.

Qualification wording

4+ years of experience in backend engineering or data engineering, ideally supporting consumer-scale applications.

Experience with Trino or Presto.

Proven experience independently building, operating, and improving production-grade data pipelines.

Experience with Kubernetes and containerized applications.

Hands-on experience with change data capture (CDC) and stream processing technologies such as Kafka, Amazon MSK, AWS DMS, or comparable tools.

Familiarity with AWS Glue.

About Tala

Most Talazens join us because they connect with our mission.

In the employer’s words · Read in context

Apply at Tala

Posting record

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Actively hiringFirst seen by us today, still listed, and not a repost of an earlier posting.

Status in our records: Live
First seen by us: Nov 5, 2026today
Recorded sightings: 1

These dates show when we found the posting. Check the employer’s website to confirm it is still accepting applications.

How this job compares

Pay

Higher than most similar jobs

$130K–$200K against $88.9K–$149K, the middle half of what similar US postings state.

From 20,015 postings in the last year. Stated ranges, not salaries paid.

Time since we first saw it

Day 0

Early. Similar jobs usually come down between day 8 and day 53.

At Tala, jobs usually come down by about day 28.

From 36,425 similar postings that came down, and 6 of Tala’s. Coming down is not always a hire.

Tala is hiring

3 open jobs

Open jobs by the week we first saw them, last 12 weeks.

Takes jobs down quickly

Hiring record

See how this role fits your experience

Add your resume and we’ll mark which of these tools you already use, and point out anything in the posting that could rule you out.

Python
AWS
Delta Lake
Iceberg
Kafka
Kubernetes
MySQL
PostgreSQL
S3
Snowflake
Spark
Terraform
Trino
Airflow

Where the posting names them

- 4+ years of experience in backend engineering or data engineering, ideally supporting consumer-scale applications. - At least 2 years of hands-on professional Python experience. - Proven experience independently building, operating, and improving production-grade data pipelines.

- Experience with infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD tools such as Terraform, Terragrunt, Helm, and Jenkins. - Familiarity with pipeline orchestration and job scheduling tools such as Airflow or Python-based services running on Kubernetes. - Strong understanding of distributed systems, scalable algorithms, and large-scale data processing.

In this individual contributor role, you will take ownership of Tala's data synchronization pipelines, ensuring that data from our market-level databases is reliably captured, processed, and delivered to Snowflake for downstream analytics and business use. Our data infrastructure uses a modern AWS-based architecture, including AWS Database Migration Service (DMS), Kafka, Spark Structured Streaming, Apache Iceberg, Amazon S3, and Snowflake. You will work across this ecosystem to ensure data is accurate, available, and delivered with minimal latency. Beyond maintaining existing pipelines, you will identify opportunities to improve performance, scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency. You will also establish and monitor service level objectives (SLOs), strengthen testing and deployment practices, and lead root cause analysis when issues arise.

- Proven experience independently building, operating, and improving production-grade data pipelines. - Hands-on experience with change data capture (CDC) and stream processing technologies such as Kafka, Amazon MSK, AWS DMS, or comparable tools. - Strong proficiency in Apache Spark, particularly Spark Structured Streaming.

- Strong database experience across relational and analytical systems, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Amazon RDS, and Snowflake. - Hands-on experience with AWS cloud infrastructure, ideally including EMR, S3, MSK, DMS, RDS, and EKS. - Experience with infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD tools such as Terraform, Terragrunt, Helm, and Jenkins.

- Experience with Kubernetes and containerized applications. - Familiarity with AWS Glue. - Experience with additional stream processing technologies such as Debezium, Amazon Kinesis, or Apache Flink.

- Strong proficiency in Apache Spark, particularly Spark Structured Streaming. - Experience with modern data lakehouse architectures and table formats such as Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, or Apache Hudi, as well as Parquet. - Strong database experience across relational and analytical systems, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Amazon RDS, and Snowflake.

- Experience with additional stream processing technologies such as Debezium, Amazon Kinesis, or Apache Flink. - Experience with other modern data lakehouse technologies such as Delta Lake or Apache Hudi. - Advanced degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related technical field.

- Experience with Trino or Presto. - Experience with Kubernetes and containerized applications. - Familiarity with AWS Glue.

- Experience with modern data lakehouse architectures and table formats such as Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, or Apache Hudi, as well as Parquet. - Strong database experience across relational and analytical systems, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Amazon RDS, and Snowflake. - Hands-on experience with AWS cloud infrastructure, ideally including EMR, S3, MSK, DMS, RDS, and EKS.

We are looking for a Senior Data Engineer to help build, operate, and continuously improve the data infrastructure that powers analytics and business intelligence across Tala's global markets. In this individual contributor role, you will take ownership of Tala's data synchronization pipelines, ensuring that data from our market-level databases is reliably captured, processed, and delivered to Snowflake for downstream analytics and business use. Our data infrastructure uses a modern AWS-based architecture, including AWS Database Migration Service (DMS), Kafka, Spark Structured Streaming, Apache Iceberg, Amazon S3, and Snowflake. You will work across this ecosystem to ensure data is accurate, available, and delivered with minimal latency.

What You'll Do - Own and operate data pipelines: Maintain and improve Tala's change data capture (CDC) and data synchronization infrastructure, ensuring accurate and timely delivery of data from market-level databases into Snowflake. - Improve pipeline performance and scalability: Identify and implement improvements to reduce latency, optimize infrastructure costs, and support growing data volumes across markets.

- Hands-on experience with change data capture (CDC) and stream processing technologies such as Kafka, Amazon MSK, AWS DMS, or comparable tools. - Strong proficiency in Apache Spark, particularly Spark Structured Streaming. - Experience with modern data lakehouse architectures and table formats such as Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, or Apache Hudi, as well as Parquet.

- Hands-on experience with AWS cloud infrastructure, ideally including EMR, S3, MSK, DMS, RDS, and EKS. - Experience with infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD tools such as Terraform, Terragrunt, Helm, and Jenkins. - Familiarity with pipeline orchestration and job scheduling tools such as Airflow or Python-based services running on Kubernetes.

Nice to Have - Experience with Trino or Presto. - Experience with Kubernetes and containerized applications.

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Job description

View original posting ↗

About Tala

Tala is the AI-native credit infrastructure that connects global capital to the global majority. We combine proprietary risk intelligence with an expanding network of capital and distribution partners to power credit access at scale. To date, Tala has distributed more than $9 billion in capital to more than 14 million customers across Africa, Latin America, and Asia, building the definitive contextual dataset on thin-file borrowers in emerging markets. Tala is now converting that foundation into shared infrastructure that partners, capital providers, and ecosystems can build on.

The company has been named to the Fortune Impact 20 list, CNBC’s World’s Top Fintech Companies twice, CNBC Disruptor 50 for five years, and Forbes’ Fintech 50 list for ten years running.

Given the global nature of our team, we operate on a remote-first approach with office hubs in Santa Monica, CA (HQ); Nairobi, Kenya; Mexico City, Mexico; Manila, the Philippines; and Bangalore, India.

Most Talazens join us because they connect with our mission. If you are energized by the impact you can make at Tala, we’d love to hear from you!

The Role

We are looking for a Senior Data Engineer to help build, operate, and continuously improve the data infrastructure that powers analytics and business intelligence across Tala's global markets.

In this individual contributor role, you will take ownership of Tala's data synchronization pipelines, ensuring that data from our market-level databases is reliably captured, processed, and delivered to Snowflake for downstream analytics and business use.

Our data infrastructure uses a modern AWS-based architecture, including AWS Database Migration Service (DMS), Kafka, Spark Structured Streaming, Apache Iceberg, Amazon S3, and Snowflake. You will work across this ecosystem to ensure data is accurate, available, and delivered with minimal latency.

Beyond maintaining existing pipelines, you will identify opportunities to improve performance, scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency. You will also establish and monitor service level objectives (SLOs), strengthen testing and deployment practices, and lead root cause analysis when issues arise.

This is an opportunity for a hands-on engineer who enjoys solving complex distributed data challenges and takes ownership of production systems from development through operation.

What You'll Do

Own and operate data pipelines: Maintain and improve Tala's change data capture (CDC) and data synchronization infrastructure, ensuring accurate and timely delivery of data from market-level databases into Snowflake.
Improve pipeline performance and scalability: Identify and implement improvements to reduce latency, optimize infrastructure costs, and support growing data volumes across markets.
Build and evolve data infrastructure: Onboard new data sources, tables, and markets while managing schema evolution and ensuring compatibility across systems.
Drive reliability and data quality: Establish service level objectives (SLOs), implement monitoring and alerting, and build automated data quality checks to ensure data remains accurate and available.
Strengthen engineering practices: Develop and maintain unit and integration tests, CI/CD workflows, infrastructure-as-code, and safe deployment strategies, including dry runs and blue-green deployments.
Lead incident resolution: Troubleshoot production issues, conduct root cause analyses, and translate lessons learned into better monitoring, testing, documentation, and operational runbooks.
Contribute to technical direction: Participate in architecture and design discussions, write and review technical design documents, and provide thoughtful feedback through code reviews.
Collaborate across teams: Partner with Data Science, Analytics, Data Platform, Product, Credit, and Business Development teams to understand their data needs and ensure reliable access to the information they depend on.

What You'll Need

4+ years of experience in backend engineering or data engineering, ideally supporting consumer-scale applications.
At least 2 years of hands-on professional Python experience.
Proven experience independently building, operating, and improving production-grade data pipelines.
Hands-on experience with change data capture (CDC) and stream processing technologies such as Kafka, Amazon MSK, AWS DMS, or comparable tools.
Strong proficiency in Apache Spark, particularly Spark Structured Streaming.
Experience with modern data lakehouse architectures and table formats such as Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, or Apache Hudi, as well as Parquet.
Strong database experience across relational and analytical systems, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Amazon RDS, and Snowflake.
Hands-on experience with AWS cloud infrastructure, ideally including EMR, S3, MSK, DMS, RDS, and EKS.
Experience with infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD tools such as Terraform, Terragrunt, Helm, and Jenkins.
Familiarity with pipeline orchestration and job scheduling tools such as Airflow or Python-based services running on Kubernetes.
Strong understanding of distributed systems, scalable algorithms, and large-scale data processing.
Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly and collaborate effectively with engineering teams and business stakeholders.

Nice to Have

Experience with Trino or Presto.
Experience with Kubernetes and containerized applications.
Familiarity with AWS Glue.
Experience with additional stream processing technologies such as Debezium, Amazon Kinesis, or Apache Flink.
Experience with other modern data lakehouse technologies such as Delta Lake or Apache Hudi.
Advanced degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related technical field.

Salary

130,000 – 200,000 USD per year

Our vision is to build a new financial ecosystem where everyone can participate on equal footing and access the tools they need to be financially healthy. We strongly believe that inclusion fosters innovation and we’re proud to have a diverse global team that represents a multitude of backgrounds, cultures, and experience. We hire talented people regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Employment type

Full-time

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