Staff Data Engineer

About Checkr
Checkr is building the data platform to power safe and fair decisions. Established in 2014, Checkr’s innovative technology and robust data platform help customers assess risk and ensure safety and compliance to build trusted workplaces and communities. Checkr has over 100,000 customers including DoorDash, Coinbase, Lyft, Instacart, and Airtable.

We’re a team that thrives on solving complex problems with innovative solutions that advance our mission. Checkr is recognized on Forbes Cloud 100 2025 List and is a Y Combinator 2024 Breakthrough Company.

About the team/role

We're seeking an experienced Staff Data Engineer to join our Data Platform team. This team plays a crucial role in our mission by developing and maintaining scalable data platforms for fair and safe hiring decisions.

As a Staff Data Engineer on the Data Platform team, you'll work on Checkr’s centralized data platform, critical for the company's vision. The centralized data platform is the heart of all key customer facing products. You will work on high-impact projects that directly contribute to the next generation products.

What you’ll do:

• Architect, design, lead and build end-to-end performant, reliable, scalable data platform.

• Be an independent individual contributor who can solve problems and deliver high-quality solutions without oversight and a high level of ownership.

• Mentor, guide and work with junior engineers to deliver complex and next-generation of features.

• Bring a customer-centric, product-oriented mindset to the table - collaborate with customers and internal stakeholders to resolve product ambiguities and ship impactful features

• Partner with engineering, product, design, and other stakeholders in designing and architecting new features

• Experimentation mindset - autonomy and empowerment to validate a customer need, get team buy-in, and ship a rapid MVP

• Quality mindset - you insist on quality as a critical pillar of your software deliverables

• Analytical mindset - instrument and deploy new product experiments with a data-driven approach

• Architect, lead and build a performant, reliable, scalable data platform.

• Monitor, investigate, triage, and resolve production issues as they arise for services owned by the team

• Create and maintain data pipelines and foundational datasets to support product/business needs.

• Design and build database architectures with massive and complex data, balancing with computational load and cost

• Develop audits for data quality at scale, implementing alerting as necessary

• Create scalable dashboards and reports to support business objectives and enable data-driven decision-making

• Troubleshoot and resolve complex issues in production environments

What you bring:

• 10+ years of designing, implementing and delivering highly scalable and performant data platform.

• Experience building large-scale (100s of Terabytes and Petabytes) data processing pipelines - batch and stream

• Experience with ETL/ELT, stream and batch processing of data at scale

• Expert level proficiency in PySpark, Python, and SQL

• Expertise in data modeling, relational databases, NoSQL (such as MongoDB) data stores

• Experience with big data technologies such as Kafka, Spark, Iceberg, Datalake, and AWS stack (EKS, EMR, Serverless, Glue, Athena, S3, etc.)

• An understanding of Graph and Vector data stores (preferred)

• Knowledge of security best practices and data privacy concerns

• Strong problem-solving skills and attention to detail

• Experience/knowledge of data processing platforms such as Databricks or Snowflake.

What you get:

• A fast-paced and collaborative environment

• Learning and development allowance

• Competitive cash and equity compensation and opportunity for advancement

• 100% medical, dental, and vision coverage

• Up to $25K reimbursement for fertility, adoption, and parental planning services

• Flexible PTO policy

• Monthly wellness stipend, home office stipend

#LI-TD1

Pay Transparency Disclosure

One of Checkr’s core values is Transparency. To live by that value, we’ve made the decision to disclose salary ranges in all of our job postings. We use geographic cost of labor as an input to develop ranges for our roles and as such, each location where we hire may have a different range. If this role is remote, we have listed the top to the bottom of the possible range, but we will specify the target range for an exact location when you are selected for a recruiting discussion. For more information on our compensation philosophy, see our website.

On-target Earnings OR Base Salary range (San Francisco, CA)
$196,000—$230,000 USD

On-target Earnings OR Base Salary range (Denver, CO)
$166,000—$195,000 USD

At Checkr, we believe a hybrid work environment strengthens collaboration, drives innovation, and encourages connection. Our hub locations are Denver, CO, San Francisco, CA, and Santiago, Chile. Individuals are expected to work from the office 2 to 3 days a week. Starting January 2026, hub-based employees will be expected to work from the office 3 days per week. In-office perks are provided, such as lunch four times a week, a commuter stipend, and an abundance of snacks and beverages. A relocation stipend may be available for those willing to relocate to a Checkr hub location.

Equal Employment Opportunities at Checkr
Checkr is committed to building the best product and company, which requires hiring talented and qualified individuals with a diverse set of perspectives and lived experiences. Checkr believes in hiring people of all backgrounds, including those whose histories are impacted by the justice system in accordance with local, state, and/or federal laws, including the San Francisco’s Fair Chance Ordinance.

*Legitimate Checkr emails will always include our official domain name after the @ symbol (e.g., [email protected] or [email protected]).