Senior Data & Analytics Engineer II

Kickstarter is the go-to crowdfunding platform for creative projects across everything from film, games and music to art, design, and technology. Fueled by the support of our team, our mission to help bring creative projects to life has been a core tenet since our inception in 2009. 

To date, we have helped more than 272,000 creative projects reach their funding goal with pledges totalling more than $8.5 billion dollars. We continue to be committed to the growth and success of not only our community, but our team as well. Rooted in shared values, Kickstarter sees team members as whole people, giving every individual the autonomy and space to participate in decisions that impact them.

Kickstarter is seeking an experienced Senior Data & Analytics Engineer II to join our Insights team. There is a tremendous opportunity to unlock new and valuable experiences for our community through the smart use of data. 

As a Senior Data & Analytics Engineer II, you will play a foundational role in modernizing our data stack, building scalable and cost-efficient pipelines, enabling deeper insights across the organization, and architecting a data foundation that allows teams to leverage data towards our goals. You will work closely with product, engineering, and business teams to ensure Kickstarter’s data is high-quality, well-structured, and accessible for decision-making.

The salary range in this role in the United States is $175,000 - 191,300.

In this role, you will:

• Develop, own and improve Kickstarter’s data architecture—optimize our Redshift warehouse, implement best practices for data storage, processing, and orchestration.
• Design and build scalable ETL/ELT pipelines to transform raw data into clean, usable datasets for analytics, product insights, and machine learning applications.
• Enhance data accessibility and self-service analytics by improving Looker models and enabling better organizational data literacy.
• Support real-time data needs by optimizing event-based telemetry and integrating new data streams to fuel new products, personalization, recommendations, and fraud detection.
• Lead cost optimization efforts—identify and implement more efficient processes and tools to lower costs.
• Drive data governance and security best practices—ensure data integrity, access controls, and proper lineage tracking.
• Collaborate across teams to ensure data solutions align with product, growth, and business intelligence needs.

About You

• 8+ years of experience in data engineering, analytics engineering, or related fields.
• Strong experience with cloud-based data warehouses (Redshift, Snowflake, or BigQuery) and query performance optimization.
• Expertise in SQL, Python, and data transformation frameworks like dbt.
• Experience building scalable data pipelines with modern orchestration tools (Airflow, MWAA, Dagster, etc.).
• Knowledge of real-time streaming architectures (Kafka, Kinesis, etc.) and event-based telemetry best practices.
• Experience working with business intelligence tools (e.g. Looker) and enabling self-serve analytics.
• Ability to drive cost-efficient and scalable data solutions, balancing performance with resource management.
• Familiarity with machine learning operations (MLOps) and experimentation tooling is a plus.
• Strong problem-solving and communication skills—comfortable working cross-functionally with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

What You'll Enjoy

• A fully remote workforce with plenty of opportunities to get to know your colleagues
• 100% employer-paid health plan offerings
• 16 paid vacation days, 10 sick days, and a company-wide winter break between Christmas and New Years
• 25 volunteer hours each year to give back to your community
• 16 weeks of parental leave plus fertility/family planning resources
• Kickstarter currently operates with a 4-day workweek, a model that aligns our belief in a healthy work-life balance and gives staff the space to be more than their work
• Incredibly talented and inspiring colleagues who know how to blend their creative endeavors into their work

You can read more about our benefits and working at Kickstarter at our Jobs page: https://jobs.kickstarter.com/

Our Fully Virtual Team

We’re currently able to support employees based in the following US locations: CA, CO, CT, FL, IL, MA, MD, NC, NJ, NY, OR, VA, VT, and WA. We're also able to support employees in the United Kingdom. If you live in—or are willing to move to—any of these locations, we look forward to your application! If there is a required or preferred location for an open role, it will be listed in the job description.   Kickstarter is an equal opportunity employer. As part of our commitment to fight for equality, we work to ensure a fair and consistent interview process. We celebrate diversity and we are committed to an inclusive work environment.   Reminder to applicants: Authentic communications from Kickstarter will always originate from official Kickstarter email domains (@kickstarter.com). Exercise caution and verify the legitimacy of anyone who claims to be representing Kickstarter on other platforms.   Please reach out to Kickstarter’s Help Center to report potentially fraudulent contact here: https://help.kickstarter.com/hc/en-us/requests/new