Sr Data Engineer I

At American Express, our culture is built on a 175-year history of innovation, shared values and Leadership Behaviors, and an unwavering commitment to back our customers, communities, and colleagues. As part of Team Amex, you'll experience this powerful backing with comprehensive support for your holistic well-being and many opportunities to learn new skills, develop as a leader, and grow your career.

Here, your voice and ideas matter, your work makes an impact, and together, you will help us define the future of American Express.

LUMI is the company’s largest Big Data Platform, purpose-built for computationally and data-intensive processing applications. Whether data is processed in batch, online, or streaming modes, LUMI provides robust, scalable, and cost-efficient capabilities to handle enterprise workloads at scale.

As a hub of passionate Big Data engineers working with the most exciting and upcoming technologies, LUMI is the cornerstone platform where engineers are challenged every day to build world-class data products.

As we embark on our journey to the public cloud (GCP), you will play a senior engineering role in a fast-paced Agile team—designing, developing, testing, troubleshooting, and optimizing solutions that simplify and accelerate access to Amex’s Big Data Platform.

Focus Areas:

• Design, develop, and optimize enterprise-scale data pipelines and platforms.
  
• Provide technical leadership across design, debugging, performance optimization, and cloud migration.
  
• Lead efforts to integrate GenAI, Agentic AI, and data observability frameworks into platform capabilities.
  
• Build solutions that meet the needs of customer-facing applications, business platforms, and internal tools.
  

Organizational Context:

Member of an engineering delivery team reporting to an Engineering Manager or Director, with accountability for driving engineering excellence and mentoring junior engineers.

Responsibilities:

• Architect and implement enterprise-grade data migration solutions using Java and Python, enabling seamless data transfers from on-premises to GCP (Cloud Storage, Big Query, Pub/Sub) using Apache Airflow and Google Cloud Composer.
  
• Build secure, scalable, and optimized data architectures leveraging GCP services such as Cloud Storage, Pub/Sub, Dataproc, Dataflow, and Big Query.
  
• Design and implement automated frameworks for data delivery, monitoring, and troubleshooting.
  
• Develop data observability frameworks to ensure quality, lineage, and reliability across pipelines.
  
• Proactively monitor system performance, identify bottlenecks, and optimize pipelines for efficiency, scalability, and cost.
  
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex technical issues in distributed systems and cloud environments.
  
• Drive best practices in documentation of tools, architecture, processes, and solutions.
  
• Mentor junior engineers, conduct design/code reviews, and influence engineering standards.
  
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to enable AI/ML and GenAI-driven use cases on LUMI.
  

Minimum Qualifications:

• 8+ years of experience in data engineering, software engineering, or platform development.
  
• Strong programming expertise in Java, Python, and Shell scripting.
  
• Advanced knowledge of SQL, data modeling, and performance optimization.
  
• Deep expertise in Google Cloud Platform services: Cloud Storage, Big Query, Pub/Sub, Dataproc, Dataflow.
  
• Strong background in RDBMS (Oracle, Postgres, MySQL) and exposure to NoSQL DBs (Cassandra, MongoDB, or similar).
  
• Proven track record in CI/CD pipelines, Git workflows, and Agile development.
  
• Demonstrated experience in building and scaling production-grade data pipelines.
  
• Strong problem-solving and troubleshooting skills in distributed and cloud-native systems.
  

Preferred Qualifications:

• Hands-on experience with DevOps best practices, automation, and infrastructure as code.
  
• Exposure to platform engineering (networking, security, IAM, firewalls).
  
• Experience designing and implementing data observability frameworks (monitoring, lineage, anomaly detection).
  
• Hands-on or exposure to GenAI integrations (LLMs, RAG, AI-driven data engineering workflows).
  
• Proven ability to mentor, influence, and lead engineering discussions.
  

This is a senior technical role where you’ll help shape the future of LUMI, driving enterprise-scale data transformation on GCP while embedding GenAI and data observability into the next generation of data platforms.

• Competitive base salaries 
• Bonus incentives 
• Support for financial-well-being and retirement 
• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life insurance, and disability benefits (depending on location) 
• Flexible working model with hybrid, onsite or virtual arrangements depending on role and business need 
• Generous paid parental leave policies (depending on your location) 
• Free access to global on-site wellness centers staffed with nurses and doctors (depending on location) 
• Free and confidential counseling support through our Healthy Minds program 
• Career development and training opportunities