Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Empower is a financial services company helping customers achieve financial freedom. The Senior Data Reliability Engineer will own the reliability, stability, and operational excellence of Empower’s AWS-based data platform by operating, troubleshooting, and improving production data systems. The role focuses on resilient data pipelines, incident response, monitoring, automation, disaster recovery, and operational practices.
Responsibilities
- Own the reliability and stability of production data pipelines and data platform services
- Diagnose and resolve data pipeline failures, delays, and data quality issues in production environments
- Investigate issues across distributed data systems (e.g., Spark/EMR workloads, ingestion pipelines, warehouse performance)
- Lead or support incident response, including triage, mitigation, and long-term resolution
- Perform root cause analysis (RCA) and implement durable fixes to prevent recurrence
- Define and improve data SLAs (freshness, latency, completeness) and ensure adherence
- Design and enhance monitoring, alerting, and observability for data systems
- Develop automation and tooling to reduce operational toil and improve system resilience
- Contribute to disaster recovery (DR) and resiliency planning, including backup validation and recovery workflows
- Partner with engineering teams to improve pipeline design, reliability, and operational readiness
- Create and maintain runbooks, SOPs, and operational documentation
- Participate in occasional off-hours support for production data systems when required
Skills
- Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S
- Minimum 5 years of experience working with production data platforms in AWS environments
- Prior experience building data pipelines and seeing them through production, including exposure to real-world failures and operational challenges
- Strong experience with Python and SQL in real data systems
- Hands-on experience troubleshooting distributed data processing systems (e.g., Spark/EMR, Redshift, streaming systems)
- Proven ability to debug and resolve production issues in data pipelines and data platforms
- Experience with AWS data services (such as EMR, Redshift, DynamoDB, S3, or similar)
- Experience handling production incidents and performing root cause analysis
- Strong problem-solving mindset and ability to work through ambiguous production issues
- For remote and hybrid positions you will be required to provide reliable high-speed internet with a wired connection as well as a place in your home to work with limited disruption
- You must have reliable connectivity from an internet service provider that is fiber, cable or DSL internet
- Experience handling real-world data issues such as pipeline delays or failures
- Experience with backfills and reprocessing
- Experience with late-arriving or incomplete data
- Experience improving observability and alerting specifically for data systems
- Experience influencing or guiding data pipeline reliability and operational practices
- Exposure to streaming/event-driven systems (Kafka, Kinesis, CDC patterns)
- Experience with disaster recovery, backup validation, and resiliency testing
- Strong communication during incidents with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
Benefits
- Flexible work environment
- Fluid career paths and internal mobility
- Medical, dental, vision and life insurance
- Retirement savings – 401(k) plan with generous company matching contributions (up to 6%), financial advisory services, potential company discretionary contribution, and a broad investment lineup
- Tuition reimbursement up to $5,250/year
- Business-casual environment that includes the option to wear jeans
- Generous paid time off upon hire – including a paid time off program plus ten paid company holidays and three floating holidays each calendar year
- Paid volunteer time — 16 hours per calendar year
- Leave of absence programs – including paid parental leave, paid short- and long-term disability, and Family and Medical Leave (FMLA)
- Business Resource Groups (BRGs) – BRGs facilitate inclusion and collaboration across our business internally and throughout the communities where we live, work and play. BRGs are open to all.
- Remote work arrangement
- Necessary computer equipment will be provided
Company Overview