Member of Technical Staff - Engineering Lead, Compute Platform
San Francisco, CA • FullTime
Posted 1d ago
About the job
Reflection is building the trusted data backbone for the world's most capable open-weight AI systems. The Data Platform team builds and operates the core data systems and pipelines that power our research, training, and production environments, unifying ingestion, processing, and orchestration across the entire data lifecycle. We are seeking a front-line technical leader to build, mentor, and grow this team, guiding its technical direction while remaining hands-on. This role is for someone who has earned deep technical credibility as an engineer and now multiplies it through a team, working closely with our research team to understand the needs of high-velocity experimentation and translate them into reliable, reproducible, scalable data infrastructure.
Responsibilities
- Build, mentor, and grow a team of approximately 10 data platform engineers.
- Guide the technical direction of the platform, including ingestion and orchestration patterns, scalable compute and storage foundations, and reproducible pipelines.
- Enable high-velocity experimentation on a unified data layer by collaborating with research, training, and production teams.
- Establish trusted data quality, lineage, and governance signals.
- Ensure predictable cost and performance through guardrails, budgets, and continuous system tuning.
- Remain hands-on in design reviews, architecture decisions, and coding.
Requirements
- 8+ years of engineering experience with a strong data engineering foundation, having shipped and owned production-grade pipelines at large scale.
- A track record as a staff/principal-level individual contributor before moving into leadership.
- Experience managing and growing a team of 5-10, or demonstrated leadership readiness to build one quickly while staying technically embedded.
- Deep expertise in at least one of: ingestion & orchestration at scale, storage and processing engines, or data quality/lineage/reproducibility systems, with working breadth across the others.
- Fluency in the modern data stack, having built new systems from scratch.
- Ability to thrive in a high-agency, fast-paced environment with a bias toward action and impact.
- Strong collaborative and clear communication skills, comfortable working across research and infrastructure boundaries.
Benefits
- Top-tier compensation (salary and equity)
- Stock options
- Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and life insurance
- Annual wellness allowance
- Provided lunch and dinner in the office
- 22 weeks paid parental leave
- Unlimited paid time off (US) / 30 days paid time off (UK)
- Visa sponsorship support
- Regular off-sites, happy hours, and team celebrations