Data Engineer Remote Contract Jobs in California

Collectors is the leading creator of innovative technology that provides value-added services for collectors worldwide. We grade, authenticate, vault, and sell millions of record-setting collectibles, all while modernizing and digitalizing the process to further our mission of helping collectors pursue their passions. We're always on the lookout for talented people to join our growing team.
Our services span collectible trading cards, autographs, comic books, coins, video games, event tickets, and memorabilia. Our subsidiaries include PSA, PCGS, Beckett, SGC, and Card Ladder.
Since our founding in 1986, we have graded and authenticated millions of items. We employ more than 3000 people across our headquarters in Santa Ana, California and offices in New Jersey, Texas, Florida, Japan, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Canada, Mexico, Germany, and France.
As part of our interview process, we request that candidates have their cameras on during video interviews. This helps foster meaningful conversation and allows us to create an experience that closely resembles our standard working environment. Certain interview steps may take place by phone. For remote roles, and at our discretion, candidates may be asked to participate in an on-site interview as part of the final stages of the process.
We understand there may be occasional circumstances requiring accommodation and are happy to discuss them as needed. Your recruiter will be able to clarify expectations and answer any questions you have.
We're transforming the collecting experience with technology that brings authentication, grading, and trading into the modern era. Our products are equalizing the playing field by providing tools that make complex research analytics - including pricing, scarcity reports, and historic sales data - accessible to every collector, old or new. Our engineering mission is to democratize technology while promoting innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning throughout the organization.
We're looking for a Staff Data Engineer to serve as the senior technical leader for our data platform. This is a hands-on IC role with outsized influence: you'll own the architecture and reliability of the pipelines that move data across the business, set the technical bar for the engineers around you, and build the platform foundations that our analytics, reporting, and AI agents depend on.
You'll report to the Staff Manager, Data Engineering & Analytics. Remote or hybrid candidates will also be considered. We believe that there is significant value in in-person collaboration.
What You'll Do:

• Own the architecture of our data platform, spanning ingestion (Hevo, Estuary), our Google BigQuery warehouse, and the dbt transformation layer - designing systems that are scalable, reliable, secure, and built to last.
• Set the technical bar as a senior IC, leading through design reviews, code review, and mentorship - raising the quality, rigor, and engineering discipline of the team without a formal management role.
• Build and harden data ingestion at scale, designing batch and CDC pipelines across a diverse set of sources - operational databases, SaaS applications, and ERP systems - and driving vendor and tooling decisions with a clear point of view.
• Develop end-to-end with AI coding agents. Our teams build with Claude Code and similar tools, and you'll help define the practices, guardrails, and standards that make AI-assisted engineering fast, safe, and high-quality.
• Invest in reliability and observability, establishing testing, monitoring, alerting, and incident-response practices so data lands on time, is trusted, and failures are caught before stakeholders notice.
• Strengthen governance and controls, implementing the access models, auditability, and operational rigor expected of a company operating at scale and under growing scrutiny.
• Lay the foundations for agentic analytics, building the well-modeled, well-governed platform that agents and MCP connections rely on to deliver trustworthy answers from data.
• Partner with analytics engineers, analysts, and stakeholders to understand data needs, unblock high-value use cases, and translate business requirements into durable platform capabilities.
• Engineer tooling and services beyond the warehouse - building the APIs, automated jobs, and internal tools in Python that make the platform run smoothly and put data in more people's hands than SQL alone can reach.
• Drive the evolution of our warehouse architecture - leading hands-on POCs on lakehouse patterns, open table formats, and alternative query engines, and deciding what's worth adopting next.

Who You Are:

• A seasoned data engineer with 8+ years building data platforms and pipelines in production, with a track record of technical leadership at the staff or senior level.
• An expert in the modern data stack. You have deep, hands-on experience with cloud data warehousing (BigQuery or equivalent), dbt, and modern ingestion tooling - and strong opinions, loosely held, about when to buy versus build.
• A systems thinker. You design for scale, failure, and change - and you can articulate the trade-offs between architectural options clearly, in writing and in person.
• Fluent in AI-assisted development. You have real experience developing with Claude Code or a similar coding agent, and you treat it as a core part of how modern engineering gets done rather than a novelty.
• Reliability-obsessed. You believe pipelines should be tested, observable, and boring - and you've built the tooling and practices to make that true on teams you've worked with.
• Governance-minded without being risk-averse. You know how to design access controls, auditability, and data-quality safeguards that earn trust in the numbers without slowing the team down.
• A force multiplier. You raise the bar for those around you through mentorship, review, and example, and you're energized by making other engineers better.
• Technically fluent and a clear communicator. You're expert in SQL and Python, deeply comfortable with version control, CI/CD, and testing workflows, and able to explain technical decisions to audiences from individual contributors to executive leadership.
• Cloud-infrastructure fluent. You work comfortably beyond the data warehouse, managing serverless compute, storage, and secrets on a major cloud platform like GCP or AWS.
• A forward-thinking architect. You stay ahead of where the data stack is heading, with well-reasoned views on lakehouse patterns and query engines that you test through hands-on work.

Salary Range: The salary range for this position $165,000-$250,000. Actual compensation on this range varies based on a variety of non-discriminatory factors, including location, job level, experience, and skill set. This role may be eligible for bonuses, commissions, or other forms of compensation, please ask your recruiter for details.
Reasons To Join Us:

• Health Insurance: All full-time employees are eligible to enroll in Medical, Dental, and Vision
• Additional Benefits: Full-time employees are eligible for fertility, commuter, and educational assistance benefits.
• 401(K) Matching Plan: We are proud to offer a competitive 401k matching plan to our employees to support their future financial goals
• Vacation: All salaried employees are eligible for flexible time-off.
• Holiday Pay: All regular, full-time employees are eligible for ten company paid holidays
• Employee Discounts: Employees receive discounts on select grading services for approved submissions
• Flexible Hours: Many of our teams offer flexible schedules with varying shifts and will work with you to accommodate your needs
• Fun Working Environment: Our team members are invited to participate in celebrations, holiday events, and team building activities
• Additional Resources: Collectors Tech Blog, PSA

Collectors uses e-Verify to validate your ability to work legally in the United States.
We are aware that there are instances where individuals are receiving job offers that fraudulently allege to be from Collectors or one of our business units. This type of fraud can be carried out through false websites, through fake e-mails claiming to be from the company or through social media. We never ask for personal information such as your bank account, Social Security numbers or National IDs, nor do we send or request payments for the purchase of business-related equipment. If you suspect fraud, please reach out to interviewfraud@collectors.com.
We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, national origin, gender, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital or parental status, disability, veteran status, or other class protected by applicable law. We believe that a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills will better service the diverse community of collectors we support.
If you require an accommodation to apply or interview with us due to a disability or special need, please email interviewaccommodation@collectors.com
U.S. residents: for disclosures relating to personal information we collect during the employment application and recruitment process, please see our Privacy Notice for U.S. Applicants.
If you are based in California, you can read information for California residents here.