Skip to main contentA logo with &quat;the muse&quat; in dark blue text.

Principal Data Engineer

AT BlackLine
BlackLine

Principal Data Engineer

Pleasanton, CA

Get to Know Us:

It's fun to work in a company where people truly believe in what they're doing!

At BlackLine, we're committed to bringing passion and customer focus to the business of enterprise applications.

Since being founded in 2001, BlackLine has become a leading provider of cloud software that automates and controls the entire financial close process. Our vision is to modernize the finance and accounting function to enable greater operational effectiveness and agility, and we are committed to delivering innovative solutions and services to empower accounting and finance leaders around the world to achieve Modern Finance.

Being a best-in-class SaaS Company, we understand that bringing in new ideas and innovative technology is mission critical. At BlackLine we are always working with new, cutting edge technology that encourages our teams to learn something new and expand their creativity and technical skillset that will accelerate their careers.

Want more jobs like this?

Get Data and Analytics jobs in Pleasanton, CA delivered to your inbox every week.

By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Service & Privacy Policy.


Work, Play and Grow at BlackLine!

Make Your Mark:

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will play a crucial role in delivering high quality releases to our customers by defining application architecture, designing, developing, troubleshooting, maintaining, optimizing, and scaling BlackLine's data platform and driving innovation into our product suite.

In this role, you will work with management to identify strategic directions for system architecture.

You will research, test, benchmark and evaluate new technologies, propose scaling solutions, collaborate with other teams to define, and build new features, optimize existing features while writing elegant code, coaching, and mentoring less experienced data engineers and communicating with people at all levels.

In this position, every bit of your software design skill be drawn upon to drive towards and implement best of breed features in a rapid iterative environment. Your attention to detail, tenacity, and creative problem-solving and thinking ahead will directly impact the company's success, as well as the success of your peers across the organization.

If you have a passion for delivering products that make a difference, are driven to make things better in all that you do and are eager to work in a collaborative agile environment where Developers are dedicated to solving customer problems and innovating, you will be a great fit for the team.

As a member of the Data & BI Engineering team you will primarily focus on advancing our Enterprise Data Platform to allow the organization to make data-driven decisions. The successful candidate will work closely with cross-functional teams to identify business requirements, design, and develop data models, data warehouses, and data visualization solutions that help support the organization's strategic goals.

The principal Data Engineer will work in a dynamic environment and will be required to stay current with the latest trends and technologies in the business intelligence field. The ideal candidate will be able to pick up business domain and internal process knowledge and leverage that knowledge to think strategically, communicate effectively, and manage multiple projects simultaneously.

The team is also responsible for administering tools and platforms around reporting, analytics, and data visualization while promoting best practices. The role requires a strong combination of technical expertise, leadership skills, and a deep understanding of data engineering principles and best practices. We are looking for a driven, detail-oriented, and passionate engineer to come to join our team.

You'll Get To:

  • Provide technical expertise and leadership in technology direction, road-mapping, architecture definition, design, development, and delivery of enterprise-class solutions while adhering to timelines, coding standards, requirements, and quality.
  • Architect, design, develop, test, troubleshoot, debug, optimize, scale, perform the capacity planning, deploy, maintain, and improve software applications, driving the delivery of high-quality value and features to Blackline's customers.
  • Work collaboratively across the company to design, communicate and further assist with adoption of best practices in architecture and implementation.
  • Deliver robust architectural solutions for complex design problems.
  • Implement, refine, and enforce data engineering best practices to ensure that delivered features meet performance, security, and maintainability expectations.
  • Research, test, benchmark, and evaluate new tools and technologies, and recommend ways to implement them in data platform. Identify and create solutions that are likely to contribute to the development of new company concepts while keeping in mind the business strategy, short- and long-term roadmap, and architectural considerations to support them in a highly scalable and easy extensible manner.
  • Actively participate in research, development, support, management, and other company initiatives designing solutions to optimally address current and future business requirements and infrastructure plans.
  • Inspire a forward-thinking team of developers, acting as an agent of change and evangelist for a quality-first culture within the organization. Mentor and coach key technical staff and guide them to solutions on complex design issues.
  • Act as a conduit for questions and information flow when those outside of Engineering have ideas for new technology applications.
  • Speak in terms relevant to audience, translating technical concepts into non-technical language and vice versa. Facilitate consensus building while striving for win/win scenarios and elicit value-add contributions from all team members in group settings.
  • Maintain a strong sense of business value and return on investment in planning, design, and communication.
  • Proactively identify issues, bottlenecks, gaps, or other areas of concern or opportunity and work to either directly affect change, or advocate for that change by working with peers and leadership to build consensus and act.
  • Perform critical maintenance, deployment, and release support activities, including occasional off-hours support.

What You'll Bring:

  • Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, Data Science, or a related field.
  • 10+ years as a data engineer designing and architecting complex systems.
  • 10+ years of experience using RDBMS, SQL, Python, or other programming languages is a plus.
  • 5+ years working experience with SQL and familiarity with Snowflake data warehouse, strong working knowledge in stored procedures, CTEs, and UDFs, RBAC.
  • Deep understanding of Data warehouse concepts, star, snowflake and dimensional modeling and ETL/ELT best practices, scalability, complex process management, self-healing approaches, etc.
  • Strong working knowledge in at-least one of the big data architectures such as Lambda, Kappa and Hub and Spoke Architectures.
  • Excellent proficiency in Stream-processing systems like Storm, Spark-Streaming, kafka streaming and building real time data pipelines.
  • Proficiency in Container technologies: Docker, and Kubernetes.
  • Experience with at least one modern Data pipeline, Replication and processing tools such as Qlik, Fivetran, airflow, Astronomer etc
  • Understanding of data security and privacy regulations, with experience implementing data security best practices.
  • Ability to define and manage user roles and permissions in Snowflake to ensure data security and privacy.
  • Experience in working in a startup-type environment, good team player, and can work independently with minimal supervision.
  • Proficient in managing large volumes of data.
  • Strong analytical and interpersonal skills, comfortable presenting complex ideas in simple terms.
  • Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively with cross-functional teams.
  • Experience in providing technical support and troubleshooting for data-related issues.
  • Expertise with at least one cloud environment and building cloud native data services.
  • Prior experience driving data governance, quality, security initiatives.

We're Even More Excited If You Have:

  • 5+ years of building data intensive applications in Java
  • Experience with nosql systems such as mongodb, cockroachDb, apache cassandra etc.
  • Significant experience with open-source platforms and technologies.
  • Experience with data science and machine learning tools and technologies is a plus.

Thrive at BlackLine Because You Are Joining:

  • A technology-based company with a sense of adventure and a vision for the future. Every door at BlackLine is open. Just bring your brains, your problem-solving skills, and be part of a winning team at the world's most trusted name in Finance Automation!
  • A culture that is kind, open, and accepting. It's a place where people can embrace what makes them unique, and the mix of cultural backgrounds and varying interests cultivates diverse thought and perspectives.
  • A culture where BlackLiner's continued growth and learning is empowered. BlackLine offers a wide variety of professional development seminars and inclusive affinity groups to celebrate and support our diversity.

BlackLine is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity or expression, race, ethnicity, age, religious creed, national origin, physical or mental disability, ancestry, color, marital status, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, status as a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking, medical condition, genetic information, or any other protected class or category recognized by applicable equal employment opportunity or other similar laws.

BlackLine recognizes that the ways we work and the workplace itself has shifted. We innovate in a workplace that optimizes a combination of virtual and in-person interactions to maximize collaboration and nurture our culture. Candidates who live within a reasonable commute to one of our offices will work in the office at least 2 days a week.

Salary Range:

USD $201,000.00 - USD $269,000.00

Pay Transparency Statement:

Placement within this range depends upon several factors, including the applicant's prior relevant job experience, skill set, and geographic location. In addition to base pay, BlackLine also offers short-term and long-term incentive programs, based on eligibility, along with a robust offering of benefit and wellness plans.

Client-provided location(s): Pleasanton, CA, USA
Job ID: blackline-4907-en-us
Employment Type: Other

Perks and Benefits

  • Health and Wellness

    • Health Insurance
    • Health Reimbursement Account
    • Dental Insurance
    • Vision Insurance
    • Life Insurance
    • Short-Term Disability
    • Long-Term Disability
    • FSA
    • FSA With Employer Contribution
    • HSA
    • HSA With Employer Contribution
    • Pet Insurance
    • Mental Health Benefits
    • Virtual Fitness Classes
  • Parental Benefits

    • Family Support Resources
  • Work Flexibility

    • Flexible Work Hours
    • Remote Work Opportunities
    • Hybrid Work Opportunities
  • Office Life and Perks

    • Casual Dress
    • Happy Hours
    • Snacks
    • Holiday Events
  • Vacation and Time Off

    • Paid Vacation
    • Unlimited Paid Time Off
    • Paid Holidays
    • Personal/Sick Days
    • Leave of Absence
    • Volunteer Time Off
    • Summer Fridays
  • Financial and Retirement

    • 401(K) With Company Matching
    • Company Equity
    • Performance Bonus
  • Professional Development

    • Tuition Reimbursement
    • Learning and Development Stipend
    • Promote From Within
    • Shadowing Opportunities
    • Access to Online Courses
    • Lunch and Learns
    • Leadership Training Program
  • Diversity and Inclusion

    • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Program
    • Employee Resource Groups (ERG)
    • Woman founded/led