Software Engineer, Data Platform (Foundations Lead)
Notion · San Francisco, California
About this role
## Software Engineer, Data Platform (Foundations Lead) ### WHO WE ARE Notion is the collaborative AI workspace where teams and agents think together. We’re building one place where your knowledge, projects, meetings, and AI tools live side by side—so work is faster, clearer, and less fragmented. Millions of individuals, small teams, and large companies run their work on Notion. We care about craft, building things that last, and the belief that great work is still fundamentally human. Our goal isn’t to ship the next feature—it’s to set the standard for how humans work together in the AI era. ### ABOUT THE ROLE Notion’s **Data Foundations** team builds and operates the **batch and streaming infrastructure** behind our product features, analytics, search, and AI experiences. We’re looking for a **hands-on technical leader** to shape the next generation of this platform as Notion serves larger customers, expands globally, and supports more data-intensive products. You’ll: - Identify the highest-leverage problems - Set direction and build a high-performing team - Lead multi-quarter initiatives across the data lake, streaming, distributed compute, governance, and reliability systems - Partner closely with Data Engineering, Data Product, Search, AI, Infrastructure, and Security **Location:** San Francisco or New York City (work from the office on **Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays** — *Anchor Days*) ### WHAT YOU’LL ACHIEVE - **Set the direction for Data Foundations**: Turn ambiguous needs into a clear multi-quarter strategy across the data lake, streaming, distributed compute, governance, and reliability. - **Build and develop a high-performing team**: Attract strong engineers, set expectations, grow technical leaders, and create ownership and accountability. - **Lead the hardest initiatives**: Own work from idea to operation; de-risk via prototypes; break into shippable milestones; coordinate execution. - **Make the data platform enterprise-ready**: External key management, data residency, access controls, lifecycle management, and governance—without creating separate systems for every requirement. - **Raise reliability, simplicity, and cost efficiency**: Identify systemic risks; establish service ownership; lead migrations to make Kafka, Debezium, S3/Iceberg, Spark, EMR, Athena, and related systems easier to operate at scale. - **Multiply the engineering organization**: Create reusable abstractions and paved paths; delegate meaningful ownership; scale expertise through coaching, documentation, tooling, and design reviews. ### SKILLS YOU’LL NEED TO BRING - **Deep data-platform expertise**: Designed and operated large-scale batch + streaming systems; strong reasoning across storage, compute, ingestion, orchestration, serving, governance, and production operations. - **Direction-setting leadership**: Led a Data Platform or infrastructure team through multi-quarter work—problem selection, strategy, sequencing, and long-term decision-making. - **Team-building and talent development**: Attracted strong engineers, developed people across career stages, and created clarity when expectations needed to change. - **Hands-on engineering judgment**: Prototype, simplify, buy, build, or migrate as appropriate; go deep while preserving ownership for engineers leading the work. - **Platform-product thinking**: Turn repeated partner needs into safe, ergonomic, self-serve capabilities. - **Organizational influence**: Surface technical/organizational r
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