Staff Data Platform Engineer at Vercel

This role is for a heavyweight data architect with at least 8 years of experience who thrives in high-growth, developer-focused environments. The ideal candidate has moved beyond simple ETL pipelines and now specializes in building massive distributed systems. You should be an expert in both real-time streaming (Kafka) and modern OLAP/Lakehouse architectures, capable of leading technical strategy while remaining hands-on with production code. The compensation is highly competitive, topping out at $294k plus equity, and offers the rare flexibility of being fully remote or hybrid in NYC/SF. Since you’ll be building the foundation for future AI/ML capabilities at a company that moves notoriously fast ("You can just ship things"), this is a high-impact position where your architectural decisions will directly shape the products used by millions of developers. **You might be a good fit if you...** * Have extensive experience with the "Modern Data Stack" (ClickHouse, Snowflake, and Iceberg). * Are a Kafka expert who can design complex event-driven systems from scratch. * Enjoy balancing high-level technical leadership with deep-dive engineering. * Experience building data foundations specifically for AI/ML or real-time analytics.