Lead Data Engineer

Dave vs. Goliath. We’re Dave.

Dave is a financial app on a mission to build products that level the financial playing field. It is redefining the financial landscape by leveraging technology to create an affordable, transparent, and user-centric access to liquidity for millions of Americans. As a leading innovator in the U.S. financial services sector, Dave’s digital financial platform offers products designed to meet the credit needs of those underserved by traditional financial institutions. Dave’s offerings include its flagship ExtraCash product, providing members up to $500 within minutes. The company is on track to launch several new product offerings in 2026, including a Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) option.

Dave is focused on serving Americans who are financially vulnerable or living paycheck to paycheck. Dave is leading the charge in creating a new era of credit products that prioritizes speed, affordability, and accessibility, making it the go-to financial partner for those who need it most.

We’re looking for a Lead Data Engineer to help design, build, and evolve the data systems that power decision-making across Dave. You’ll combine hands-on engineering with technical leadership, shaping how we build reliable, scalable data infrastructure as the business grows.

The Opportunity

This role has meaningful ownership across Dave’s data platform. You’ll work across business domains and platform capabilities, solving complex data challenges while helping establish the technical patterns that make our systems easier to build, operate, and scale.

You’ll partner closely with engineering and business teams to turn evolving needs into durable solutions. Not everything will be fully defined—you’ll help clarify the path, make thoughtful architecture trade-offs, and ensure we’re building systems that hold up over time.

What You’ll Build & Own

• Lead the design, implementation, operation, and evolution of production data pipelines and core platform capabilities.

• Build and improve integrations across APIs, files, CDC and event sources, cloud services, and internal systems.

• Establish strong patterns for data modeling, orchestration, testing, data quality, observability, retries, backfills, and recovery.

• Improve Snowflake, dbt, and Airflow/Cloud Composer workloads with a focus on reliability, scalability, performance, and cost.

• Lead technical design reviews, clarify system boundaries, and help teams make thoughtful architecture and delivery trade-offs.

• Strengthen the broader engineering organization through mentorship, documentation, standards, and durable solutions that reduce operational burden and single-person dependencies.

The Impact

The systems you build will help teams across Dave access reliable data and make better decisions. By improving the reliability and scalability of our data platform, you’ll help create a stronger foundation for our products, operations, and continued growth.

What We’re Looking For

• 5+ years of software or data engineering experience, including significant ownership of production data systems.

• Strong Python and SQL skills, along with solid software engineering fundamentals including testing, code review, version control, and CI/CD.

• Experience with a modern cloud data warehouse such as Snowflake, BigQuery, or Redshift.

• Experience with orchestration and transformation frameworks such as Airflow/Cloud Composer and dbt, or comparable technologies.

• Strong understanding of data modeling, incremental processing, data quality, observability, and production recovery.

• Demonstrated architecture judgment and experience providing technical leadership and mentorship across teams.

• Ability to navigate ambiguity, clarify ownership, and communicate technical and business trade-offs clearly.

Bonus points for:

• Fintech or other high-stakes or regulated data experience.

• CDC, streaming, event-driven, or high-volume integration experience.

• Experience with GCP technologies such as Dataflow, Pub/Sub, and Cloud Storage.

• Experience with metadata, lineage, semantic layers, governance, privacy, or AI-ready data platforms.

What Makes Someone Successful Here

You take responsibility for outcomes, not just deliverables. You’re comfortable going deep enough to diagnose a production issue while also stepping back to understand how a technical decision affects reliability, cost, partner teams, and the broader business. You care about building systems that hold up over time and know when to optimize for speed versus durability.

You also make the people around you more effective. You share context, invite feedback, mentor other engineers, and create standards and documentation that reduce dependency on any one person. When priorities or information change, you adjust thoughtfully without losing sight of the outcome.

What to Expect

You’ll have meaningful autonomy and the opportunity to shape both systems and engineering practices. We make decisions using data, technical judgment, and input from the teams affected by them. Priorities will evolve as Dave grows, and you’ll have a voice in determining how our data platform evolves with them.

We also use AI-assisted engineering tools where they make us more effective, while maintaining strong expectations around security, validation, quality, and human accountability.

Why Join Dave

• Build for a meaningful mission. Help create the data foundation behind products designed to give everyday Americans better access to their money.

• Own consequential technical problems. Work on production systems where reliability, quality, and thoughtful architecture matter.

• Shape how we build. Influence technical standards and platform direction, not just individual projects.

• Grow the team around you. Share expertise, mentor engineers, and create systems that make everyone more effective.

Ready to build for the underdog?

Don’t let imposter syndrome get in the way of an incredible opportunity. We’re looking for people who can help us achieve our mission and vision, not just check off the boxes. If you’re excited about this role, we encourage you to apply. You may just be the right candidate for this or other roles.

Why you’ll love working here: 

At Dave, our people are just as important as our product. Our culture reflects the values that guide who we are, how we work, and what we aspire to be. Daves are member-centric, helpful, transparent, persistent, and better together. We strive to create an environment where all Daves feel valued, heard, and empowered to do their best work. As a virtual-first company, team members can live and work anywhere in the United States, except Hawaii.

A few of our benefits & perks:

💚 Opportunity to tackle tough challenges, learn and grow from fellow top talent, and help millions of people reach their personal financial goals

💻 Flexible hours and virtual-first work culture with a home office stipend

🏥 Premium Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance plans

👶 Generous paid parental and caregiver leave

💰 401(k) savings plan with matching contributions

📈 Financial advisor and financial wellness support

🏖️ Flexible PTO and generous company holidays, including Juneteenth and Winter Break

🎉 All-company in-person events once or twice a year and virtual events throughout to connect with your team members and leadership team

Dave Operating LLC is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and is dedicated to cultivating a diverse and inclusive workplace. We will consider for employment all qualified applicants and do not discriminate on any basis protected by federal, state, or local law, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance relating to an applicant's criminal history.

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