Data Foundations Engineering Leader

Location: Hybrid in San Francisco or New York City, with office attendance required on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays

Salary: $281,000–$334,000 per year for roles based in San Francisco

Company

Notion provides a collaborative AI workspace for knowledge, projects, meetings, and AI tools.

What you will do

• Set the multi-quarter strategy for Data Foundations across the data lake, streaming, distributed compute, governance, and platform reliability.
• Build and develop a high-performing engineering team, grow technical leaders, and establish clear ownership and accountability.
• Lead complex initiatives from architecture and prototyping through delivery, operation, and cross-team execution.
• Guide enterprise-ready capabilities for external key management, data residency, access controls, lifecycle management, and governance.
• Improve the reliability, simplicity, scalability, and cost efficiency of Kafka, Debezium, S3/Iceberg, Spark, EMR, Athena, and related systems.
• Create reusable platform interfaces and self-serve capabilities for Data Engineering, Search, AI, and product teams.

Requirements

• Deep experience designing and operating large-scale batch and streaming data-platform systems.
• Experience leading a Data Platform or infrastructure team through multi-quarter strategy and execution.
• Experience attracting engineers, developing talent, and building technical leadership.
• Strong hands-on engineering judgment across storage, compute, ingestion, orchestration, serving, governance, and production operations.
• Ability to turn recurring partner needs into safe, ergonomic, self-serve platform capabilities.
• Ability to influence across organizational boundaries through technical direction, delegation, feedback, and coaching.

Nice to have

• Experience with S3, Iceberg, Kafka, Debezium, Spark, EMR, or Athena.
• Experience building data residency, external key management, compliant processing, and enterprise governance capabilities.
• Strong curiosity about using AI as a practical collaborator in engineering work.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid work with regular in-person collaboration on designated Anchor Days.
• Competitive cash compensation, equity, and benefits.
• Emphasis on craft, durable systems, ownership, direct feedback, and accountability.
• Equal opportunity employment and reasonable accommodations during the application process.