Data Platform Engineer

Postgres
UNITED STATES
October 20, 2026
Full Time
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Job Description

Company: Motion Recruitment (Client: Retail Technology Company)
Location: Lake Forest, CA
Workplace Type: On-site
Employment Type: Full-time
Pay / Compensation: $140,000 – $155,000 / year

About the Role

Our client is a retail technology company developing connected devices and cloud software to help retailers improve loss prevention and customer safety. Its platform brings together device events, operational data, analytics, and customer-facing applications across store locations. The company is expanding its data platform on Google Cloud and is seeking a hands-on engineer with strong BigQuery, PostgreSQL, GCP, Python, backend development, and data warehousing experience. This role sits at the intersection of data engineering and backend development. You will build and improve the PostgreSQL database, BigQuery warehouse, data pipelines, and APIs that support customer products and internal reporting.

What You’ll Do / Key Responsibilities

  • Database Operations & Design: Design and maintain PostgreSQL schemas, queries, indexes, migrations, and production database operations on Google Cloud SQL.
  • Data Warehousing: Build and improve BigQuery datasets, data models, analytical views, and reporting pipelines.
  • Pipeline Development: Develop Python services and data pipelines that move information between operational systems, event streams, and the warehouse.
  • API Development: Build secure REST or GraphQL APIs that make data available to customer applications and internal tools.
  • Performance & Cost Optimization: Improve data quality, pipeline reliability, query performance, and cloud costs.
  • Security & Access Control: Help enforce access controls and separation of customer data throughout the platform.
  • Infrastructure Management: Use GCP services and Terraform to deploy and maintain data infrastructure.
  • Troubleshooting: Investigate production issues, work with engineering and operations teams on fixes, and share knowledge through code reviews and collaboration.

Requirements & Qualifications

  • 3–7 years of hands-on data engineering or backend development experience.
  • Strong, direct BigQuery experience, including data modeling, analytical queries, performance optimization, and warehouse design.
  • Strong PostgreSQL experience, including schema design, query optimization, indexing, and production database work.
  • Hands-on GCP experience, particularly with BigQuery, Cloud SQL, and services used to run data pipelines or backend applications.
  • Production Python development experience for backend services, data pipelines, or cloud integrations.
  • Experience building and maintaining data warehouses and reliable data flows.
  • Experience developing APIs or backend services used by production applications.

Preferred / Bonus Qualifications (if applicable)

  • Experience using AI tools or integrating AI capabilities into products or engineering workflows.
  • Experience with event-driven systems, change data capture, or device-generated data.
  • Terraform, CI/CD, and GCP infrastructure experience.
  • Experience with multi-tenant applications, access controls, and data security.
  • Familiarity with retail technology, IoT, or loss prevention.
  • Experience working with hardware, firmware, or distributed engineering teams.

Benefits & Perks (if applicable)

  • Attractive total compensation package between $140,000 – $155,000
  • Comprehensive healthcare benefits including medical, dental, and vision coverage; Life/ADD/LTD insurance; FSA/HSA options
  • 401(k) Plan with employer match
  • Generous paid time off policy
  • Observance of 11 paid company holidays

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