Senior Staff Data Engineer

This is a remote role within the United States. Due to FedRAMP requirements, this role requires US citizenship.

About the role:

Join the team building SailPoint Observability & Insights, an industry-leading visualization capability for identity governance that shows every access path from identities to sensitive data and enables fast, policy-driven action from a unified view. This is a Senior Staff role: you will design and build critical systems, set technical direction, and lead cross-team execution.

You will own core data platform capabilities behind Observability & Insights (powered by SailPoint’s internal Identity Graph), spanning batch and streaming pipelines, warehousing, and graph-oriented storage. You will help power a graph with billions of nodes and edges, where backend architecture directly determines UX speed, clarity, and trust.

• Lead architecture and implementation of scalable ETL/ELT pipelines and data services for Observability & Insights.

• Own technical strategy for core data domains; align roadmap and design decisions across partner teams.

• Act as primary technical lead for cross-team initiatives with clear delivery outcomes.

• Set and enforce standards for data quality, governance, lineage, observability, and operational readiness.

• Drive performance and cost improvements across Spark/Flink/SQL/CQL workloads and storage patterns.

• Optimize graph-serving data models and access patterns so complex relationship visualizations remain responsive at extreme scale.

• Partner closely with product and UI engineering to deliver low-latency experiences for graph exploration, filtering, and risk investigation.

• Lead design reviews and provide high-signal code and architecture feedback.

• Partner with product, infrastructure, security, and analytics teams to define practical solutions.

• Participate in on-call for critical systems and lead incident follow-throughs that improve system resilience.

• Use AI-assisted development practices to accelerate delivery while upholding architecture, security, data governance, and code-review standards.

• 12+ years building production software, with substantial time in data engineering at SaaS scale.

• 6+ years owning architecture for commercial data platforms or major data subsystems.

• US Citizenship is required for this position due to FedRAMP support responsibilities.

• Expert experience with Snowflake data modeling and query optimization.

• Strong hands-on experience with dbt, Airflow, and distributed processing patterns (batch + streaming).

• Strong experience with Cassandra and familiarity with graph-oriented data systems.

• Experience building or operating systems that handle billions of relationships with predictable latency and high reliability.

• Deep understanding of cloud-native systems on AWS, Azure, or GCP.

• Proven record of leading high-complexity projects across team/org boundaries.

• Proven ability to improve team-level delivery quality (planning, dependencies, execution, reliability).

• Practical experience using AI-assisted software development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or Claude Code) in a professional engineering workflow, including data modeling, SQL/dbt, and pipeline development, testing, and documentation, with disciplined review before production use.

• Strong communication skills: can explain tradeoffs to engineers, product leaders, and executives.

• BS in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

• Experience running data platforms with SLOs and modern observability (Grafana, Prometheus, Datadog).

• Experience instrumenting data jobs and services for performance, quality, and cost visibility.

• Familiarity with IAM/IGA, compliance, security, or privacy-sensitive product domains.

• Experience with Kubernetes, infrastructure-as-code, and continuous delivery for data systems.

• Familiarity with AI.

• Familiarity with data lake patterns and Spark/Flink operational tuning.

• Ramp quickly on Observability & Insights architecture, operations, and roadmap.

• Contribute meaningful improvements (reliability, performance, or design quality).

• Build strong working relationships with key partner teams.

• Own a major data-layer initiative end to end.

• Publish and align a technical strategy for your domain with partner teams.

• Raise design and execution quality through reviews, standards, and clear technical direction.

• Deliver at least one cross-team, high-impact program with measurable product and engineering outcomes.

• Establish durable architecture and operating practices that improve reliability, cost, and delivery speed.

• Improve end-user graph exploration performance for dense, large-scale relationship paths.

• Be a recognized technical leader for Observability & Insights data architecture and execution.

Benefits and Compensation listed vary based on the location of your employment and the nature of your employment with SailPoint.

As a part of the total compensation package, this role may be eligible for the SailPoint Corporate Bonus Plan or a role-specific commission, along with potential eligibility for equity participation. SailPoint maintains broad salary ranges for its roles to account for variations in knowledge, skills, experience, market conditions and locations, as well as reflect SailPoint’s differing products, industries, and lines of business. Candidates are typically placed into the range based on the preceding factors as well as internal peer equity. We estimate the base salary, for US-based employees, will be in this range from (min-mid-max, USD):

Base salaries for employees based in other locations are competitive for the employee’s home location.

Benefits Overview

1. Health and wellness coverage: Medical, dental, and vision insurance

2. Disability coverage: Short-term and long-term disability

3. Life protection: Life insurance and Accidental Death & Dismemberment (AD&D)

4. Additional life coverage options: Supplemental life insurance for employees, spouses, and children

5. Flexible spending accounts for health care, and dependent care; limited purpose flexible spending account

6. Financial security: 401(k) Savings and Investment Plan with company matching

7. Time off benefits: Flexible vacation policy

8. Holidays: 8 paid holidays annually

9. Sick leave

10. Parental support: Paid parental leave

11. Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and Care Counselors

12. Voluntary benefits: Legal Assistance, Critical Illness, Accident, Hospital Indemnity and Pet Insurance options

13. Health Savings Account (HSA) with employer contribution

SailPoint is an equal opportunity employer and we welcome all qualified candidates to apply to join our team.  All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other category protected by applicable law.  

Alternative methods of applying for employment are available to individuals unable to submit an application through this site because of a disability. Contact [email protected] or mail to 11120 Four Points Dr, Suite 100, Austin, TX 78726, to discuss reasonable accommodations.  NOTE: Any unsolicited resumes sent by candidates or agencies to this email will not be considered for current openings at SailPoint.