Fast Facts

Grammarly is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for their Data Platform team to architect and develop scalable data systems, enabling real-time data processing for a leading AI writing assistance company.

Responsibilities: Key responsibilities include architecting large-scale data systems, collaborating with cross-functional teams, and mentoring engineers to drive technical excellence.

Skills: Candidates should have expertise in large-scale distributed computing, data engineering, and SQL, along with a solid understanding of ETL/ELT design patterns and modern data storage technologies like Delta Lake and Snowflake.

Qualifications: Preferred qualifications include at least 10 years of experience in distributed computing and a strong background in managing high-load production environments, along with experience in Spark, Kafka, and Terraform.

Location: Hybrid position based in San Francisco, with opportunities for in-person collaboration.

Compensation: $220000 - $270000 / Annually

Grammarly offers a dynamic hybrid working model for this role. This flexible approach gives team members the best of both worlds: plenty of focus time along with in-person collaboration that helps foster trust, innovation, and a strong team culture.  

About Grammarly

Grammarly is the world’s leading AI writing assistance company, trusted by over 40 million people and 50,000 organizations. From instantly creating a first draft to perfecting every message, Grammarly helps people at 96% of the Fortune 500 and teams at companies like Atlassian, Databricks, and Zoom get their point across—and get results—with best-in-class security practices that keep data private and protected. Founded in 2009, Grammarly is No. 14 on the Forbes Cloud 100, one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential Companies, one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in AI, and one of Inc.’s Best Workplaces.

The Opportunity

To achieve our ambitious goals, we’re looking for a Senior Engineer to join our Data Platform team and help us build a world-class data platform. Grammarly’s success depends on its ability to efficiently ingest over 60 to 70 billion daily events while using our systems to improve our product. This role presents a unique opportunity to experience all aspects of building complex software systems, including contributing to the strategy, defining the architecture, and developing and shipping to production.

Grammarly’s engineers and researchers have the freedom to innovate and uncover breakthroughs—and, in turn, influence our product roadmap. The complexity of our technical challenges is growing rapidly as we scale our interfaces, algorithms, and infrastructure. You can hear more from our team on our technical blog.

Overview

As a Senior Engineer on the Data Platform team, you will shape the architecture and technical strategy of our data platform, ensuring scalability, security, and efficiency across data engineering systems. You will design and lead the implementation of robust, scalable, and reliable systems that handle large volumes of data, empowering both product features and data-driven decision-making across the company. Your work will span areas such as real-time & ETL data pipelines, cloud infrastructure, data lakes, and back-end services.

This role requires you to collaborate with cross-functional teams, including back-end engineers, Analytics engineering, Data Science engineering, and machine learning teams, to drive initiatives that support various business outcomes. As a senior IC, you will also mentor engineers and help set the strategic direction for the platform.

In this role, you will:

• Architect and lead the development of large-scale systems for data pipelines, data lakes that handle billions of daily events.
• Design and implement solutions that ensure data is available, secure, and scalable across the platform, enabling real-time and batch processing.
• Make high-level architectural decisions about system design, technology choices, and platform evolution, ensuring scalability and long-term sustainability.
• Collaborate with key stakeholders, such as product teams, data engineers, back-end developers, and ML engineers, to build tools & frameworks that power analytics, product features, and data-driven workflows.
• Work with business stakeholders such as Analytics Eng, Data Science teams to build high-impact data products enabling business-critical features, research, and experimentation with a focus on efficiency and alignment
• Collaborate with Leadership in devising the charter and technical roadmaps
• Mentor engineers across back-end infrastructure and data engineering disciplines, fostering a culture of collaboration and technical excellence.

Qualifications

• Brings at least 10 years of experience in large-scale distributed computing systems, with expertise in both data engineering and data modeling.
• Has 5+ years of experience managing live production environments, including high-load systems or data-intensive workflows with a focus on uptime and reliability.
• Expert in SQL and proficient in technologies like Spark, Kafka, Terraform, and in at least one programming language commonly used for data engineering (e.g., Python, Scala, or Java).
• Strong knowledge of ETL/ELT design patterns, orchestration tools (e.g., Airflow, dbt, Dagster), and data quality frameworks.
• Ability to design scalable, secure, and maintainable data models and architectures, and understanding of data governance, privacy regulations (GDPR/CCPA).
• Hands-on experience with modern data storage technologies (e.g., Delta Lake, Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift).
• Is a strategic thinker, able to evaluate whether to build internally or leverage third-party solutions, ensuring the right balance between speed, scalability, and long-term viability.
• Is an excellent communicator and collaborator, able to work across diverse teams and stakeholders, translates business needs into robust data solutions, and ensures alignment on technical goals.
• Has a demonstrated ability to work independently with minimal guidance, proactively manages tasks and priorities across multiple projects, analyzes and executes work efficiently, collaborates effectively with cross-functional teams, and thrives in fast-paced, results-driven environments.
• Embodies our EAGER values—is ethical, adaptable, gritty, empathetic, and remarkable.
• Is inspired by our MOVE principles: move fast and learn faster; obsess about creating customer value; value impact over activity; and embrace healthy disagreement rooted in trust.

Compensation and Benefits

Grammarly offers all team members competitive pay along with a benefits package encompassing the following and more:

• Excellent health care (including a wide range of medical, dental, vision, mental health, and fertility benefits)
• Disability and life insurance options
• 401(k) and RRSP matching
• Paid parental leave
• 20 days of paid time off per year, 12 days of paid holidays per year, two floating holidays per year, and flexible sick time
• Generous stipends (including those for caregiving, pet care, wellness, your home office, and more)
• Annual professional development budget and opportunities

Grammarly takes a market-based approach to compensation, which means base pay may vary depending on your location. Our US locations are categorized into two compensation zones based on proximity to our hub locations. Base pay may vary considerably depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The expected salary ranges for this position are outlined below by compensation zone and may be modified in the future.

Zone 1: $220,000 to $270,000 (USD)

We encourage you to apply

At Grammarly, we value our differences, and we encourage all to apply—especially those whose identities are traditionally underrepresented in tech organizations. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, ancestry, national origin, citizenship, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, political belief, or any other characteristic protected by law. Grammarly is an equal opportunity employer and a participant in the US federal E-Verify program (US). We also abide by the Employment Equity Act (Canada).

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