Senior Data Platform Engineer

Helcim is searching for a Senior Data Platform Developer to help lead the design, development, and ongoing evolution of the data platform that powers Helcim’s mission to become the world’s most loved payments company. As a senior individual contributor within Helcim’s data centre of excellence, you will be a go-to technical expert for our data platform. You’ll work hands-on across our data infrastructure, MLOps/AI tooling, governance practices, and real-time modeling and monitoring capabilities, while establishing the standards that ensure our data platform is scalable, trusted, and highly accessible. At this level, we’re looking for someone who can take undefined business and technical problems, break them down into clear milestones, and lead the work through to high-quality outcomes. Collaborating cross-functionally, you will influence key architectural decisions, mentor data professionals across the Data Platform & Science teams, and proactively mitigate platform risks before they scale. You are an experienced data professional who thrives on solving complex, real-world problems and building resilient, scalable systems that last. Comfortable operating in ambiguity, you know how to ask the right questions and drive deep technical solutions that serve long-term business goals. While you love being hands-on, you are also a natural team multiplier who elevates those around you through active mentorship, clear documentation, and technical leadership. You care deeply about technical excellence but understand how to balance speed with long-term quality, making pragmatic architectural tradeoffs that scale with the business. Ultimately, you are energized by the opportunity to shape the future of Helcim’s data platform and empower teams across the company to do their best work. Qualifications & Experience 6+ years of experience as a data engineer, analytics engineer, data platform developer, or similar role. Strong experience designing, building, and maintaining production-grade data pipelines and data platform infrastructure. Experience deploying data products, analytics assets, or data platform capabilities into production. Experience working cross-functionally with technical and non-technical stakeholders to understand business needs and translate them into scalable technical solutions. Demonstrated experience leading complex technical projects from discovery through delivery. Experience mentoring, coaching, reviewing work, or otherwise helping other team members grow technically. Key Competencies You excel at untangling vague, complex data problems, distilling them into practical, high-quality execution plans while creating clarity for the broader team. You possess strong technical judgment and make sound cross-domain trade-offs. You proactively hunt down platform risks, technical debt, and governance gaps before they scale. You naturally multiply the effectiveness of the engineers around you through collaborative technical guidance, code reviews, and robust documentation. You can effectively drive buy-in for platform roadmaps and confidently represent technical decisions to both internal leadership and external entities (e.g., auditors or compliance). Bonus Points: Technology Stack: We use BigQuery, dbt, Airflow, and Airbyte as our data warehousing technologies and SQL + Python as our programming languages Custom Tooling & Plugins: Experience developing Agentic Workflows, developing Specs/Skills for IDEs to automate the development of data pipelines & infrastructure Container Orchestration: Hands-on experience with Kubernetes for deploying, scaling, and managing containerized data applications and MLOps workflows. Here are the things you’ll own day to day: Drive and own the advancement of Helcim’s MLOps and AI Gateway infrastructure, actively pushing these capabilities forward to support production AI and machine learning models. Lead the end-to-end design of scalable data pipelines (structured and semi-structured) to power ML models, AI systems, BI, and operational decision needs. Continually improve Helcim’s self-managed data platform for high performance, reliability, and observability, while proactively mitigating technical risks. Expand internal AI tooling and automate data governance to ensure data quality, privacy, security, and trust. Translate ambiguous data platform challenges into clear technical milestones, execution plans, and long-term roadmap contributions. Partner with the Staff Developer to drive technical design, balancing trade-offs and advising on complex cross-team data platforms. Foster a collaborative data culture by mentoring engineers (co-designing, code reviews) and equipping teams with the data tools and documentation they need to succeed. Helcim was founded with a mission at heart: to be the world’s most loved payment system. From the very start, we knew that we wanted to be different from every payment processor out there. We want the merchants we serve to feel supported and see us as a trusted partner rather than simply just another “cost of doing business.” We are relentless in our pursuit to provide a radically transparent and honest payments solution that flat out saves business owners money, all while treating them like human beings. At Helcim, we build a team of engaged, caring and intelligent people. In return we provide an environment where you can be excited to come to work each day and tackle these challenges with an amazing team. Learn more in our culture book; The Way of the Helcim. The Helcim Culture: How We Work We Are Builders: We don't wait for solutions; we create them. The Harder Path: We choose what’s difficult because it’s more rewarding. Creating Trust: We earn it every day by being our best selves. Company of Many: We’re a collective force. Great teams do great things. The Perks: Why You’ll Love It Here 🎁 Ownership: Every single team member gets Stock Options. You own a piece of what you build! 📈 Health First: Comprehensive benefits + a Health Spending Account (HSA) starting on Day 1. 🦷 Flexibility: Hybrid life! We’re in-office Mon/Wed/Fri and remote Tue/Thu. 🏠 Family Support: Top-ups for maternity leave and "bonding breaks." 👶 Rest & Recharge: Paid vacation + a full company break in December. ❄️ Growth: $500 annual training budget to keep your skills sharp. 📚 LOGISTICS Job type: Full-time Hiring manager: Sam Elliott Location: Hybrid, In Office Mondays, Wednesdays + Fridays Candidates must be eligible to work in Canada and be located in Calgary for this position.