Senior Principal Data Engineer

26WD96752

Position Overview
 

Autodesk is a global leader in 3D design, engineering, and entertainment software, empowering innovators to design and make a better world. Our platforms support millions of users across industries including architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, and media. The Growth Experience Technology (GET) organization is seeking a Senior Principal Data Engineer to lead the evolution of our enterprise data ecosystem powering digital experience, commerce, and customer intelligence platforms.
 

This is a high-impact technical leadership role responsible for defining architecture, scaling data platforms, and enabling AI-driven personalization and decision intelligence at global scale. You will operate across multiple teams as a technical authority, mentor, and strategic driver, shaping both execution and long-term vision.
 

Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Own and drive the end-to-end data architecture strategy for large-scale distributed data platforms supporting analytics, Applied AI, and personalization

• Design and oversee highly scalable, low-latency data pipelines (batch and streaming) for real-time and near real-time use cases

• Lead architectural decisions across technologies such as Snowflake, Spark, Flink, Iceberg, Kafka, and AWS ecosystem

• Define and enforce data modeling standards (conceptual, logical, physical) across enterprise domains

• Evaluate and adopt emerging technologies, including Generative AI and AI-assisted engineering tools, to enhance platform capabilities
   

Data Platform & Engineering Excellence

• Establish best practices for DataOps, including CI/CD, observability, data quality, testing frameworks, and reliability engineering

• Drive improvements in data quality frameworks, governance, lineage, and monitoring

• Standardize engineering patterns, frameworks, and reusable components across teams

• Lead the design and implementation of enterprise-grade ETL/ELT pipelines using tools such as DBT, Python, and SQL

• Ensure systems meet performance, scalability, security, and cost optimization requirements
   

AI & Advanced Data Use Cases

• Architect platforms enabling model training, inference, and personalization at scale

• Support development of customer data platforms, behavioral analytics, and segmentation systems

• Enable Generative AI use cases, including intelligent data discovery, self-service analytics, and automation of data workflows
   

Leadership, Mentorship & Influence

• Act as a force multiplier across multiple scrum teams (7–9 engineers per team), mentoring senior engineers and technical leads

• Provide guidance during critical production incidents, root cause analysis, and system recovery

• Drive alignment across engineering, product, architecture, and business stakeholders globally

• Influence and define technical strategy, roadmaps, and cross-organizational standards

• Represent engineering in executive-level discussions and cross-functional initiatives
   

Business & Stakeholder Alignment

• Translate business requirements (GTM, sales, finance, customer analytics) into scalable technical solutions

• Partner with product, analytics, and business teams to deliver actionable insights and data products

• Lead discussions on trade-offs, prioritization, and architectural decisions in ambiguous environments
   

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field

• 12+ years of experience in software and data engineering for enterprise-scale systems

• Deep expertise in:

  • Data architecture & distributed systems design

  • Big data technologies: Spark, Flink, Kafka, Iceberg, Parquet

  • Cloud platforms: AWS (S3, Lambda, ECS/EKS, etc)

  • Data warehousing: Snowflake (preferred)

• Advanced proficiency in SQL, Python, and modern ELT frameworks (e.g., DBT)

• Strong experience in data modeling, query optimization, and performance tuning

• Proven experience building event-driven architectures and streaming pipelines

• Experience leading multi-team, global engineering initiatives

• Strong communication skills with ability to influence senior stakeholders
   

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with GTM systems (sales planning, customer segmentation, subscription/consumption models)

• Background in customer data platforms (CDP) and behavioral analytics

• Experience delivering AI/ML pipelines or production ML systems

• Exposure to Generative AI applications in data engineering workflows

• Familiarity with observability tools such as Splunk, Dynatrace, or similar

• Experience leading large-scale platform migrations or modernization initiatives

The Ideal Candidate

• Recognized technical authority with a track record of delivering large-scale distributed data platforms

• Operates effectively at both hands-on technical depth and strategic leadership levels

• Strong advocate for engineering excellence, automation, and developer productivity

• Demonstrated ability to navigate ambiguity and drive alignment across organizations

• Passionate about leveraging data and AI to drive business transformation and innovation
   

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Learn More

About Autodesk

Welcome to Autodesk! Amazing things are created every day with our software – from the greenest buildings and cleanest cars to the smartest factories and biggest hit movies. We help innovators turn their ideas into reality, transforming not only how things are made, but what can be made.

We take great pride in our culture here at Autodesk – it’s at the core of everything we do. Our culture guides the way we work and treat each other, informs how we connect with customers and partners, and defines how we show up in the world.

When you’re an Autodesker, you can do meaningful work that helps build a better world designed and made for all. Ready to shape the world and your future? Join us!

Salary transparency

Salary is one part of Autodesk’s competitive compensation package. Offers are based on the candidate’s experience and geographic location. In addition to base salaries, our compensation package may include annual cash bonuses, commissions for sales roles, stock grants, and a comprehensive benefits package.

Diversity & Belonging
We take pride in cultivating a culture of belonging where everyone can thrive. Learn more here: https://www.autodesk.com/company/diversity-and-belonging

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