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Founding Data Engineer Jobs in New York (NOW HIRING)

Holly

Founding Data Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$170K - $216K/yr

About the role * We're hiring our Founding Data Engineer to build the data backbone of Holly. Local governments publish enormous amounts of public information - salary schedules, job classifications ...

Flora AI

Founding Data Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$170K - $240K/yr

About the role We're hiring a Senior or Staff Data Engineer to build FLORA's data function from scratch. You'd be the first data hire, working directly with the CTO and Head of Product to define what ...

Counsel

Founding Data Analyst

New York, NY · On-site

$150K - $175K/yr

This is an early-stage, high-impact founding role spanning data wrangling and pipeline development ... Partner with Analytics Engineer to validate pipelines and metric definitions. * Turn messy datasets ...

Shaped

Data Engineer

Brooklyn, NY · Remote

$130K - $200K/yr

You will be a founding engineer working to reliably ingest customer data (both with batch and real-time processing) into our our state-of-the-art AI discovery engine. As one of Shaped's early ...

Shaped

Data Engineer

Brooklyn, NY · On-site

$130K - $200K/yr

You will be a founding engineer working to reliably ingest customer data (both with batch and real-time processing) into our our state-of-the-art AI discovery engine. As one of Shaped's early ...

NxT Level

Founding Backend Engineer

Manhattan, NY

Founding Senior Backend Engineer (Data Platform / Integrations) Location: New York City -- In-Person The Opportunity Our client is hiring a Founding Senior Backend Engineer to own the data platform ...

NxT Level

Founding Backend Engineer

Manhattan, NY · On-site

Founding Senior Backend Engineer (Data Platform / Integrations) Location: New York City - In-Person The Opportunity Our client is hiring a Founding Senior Backend Engineer to own the data platform ...

David Joseph & Company

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$160K - $260K/yr

Data / AI The Role A high-ownership founding-engineer role working directly with the founders on product vision and implementation, as one of the first engineering hires at a company with real, daily ...

Lawrence Harvey

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$180K - $225K/yr

... scale data processing. What You'll Be Building * Core systems that track AI-generated code ... Founding engineer opportunity with meaningful equity * Solve genuinely difficult engineering ...

Jampack AI

Founding Engineer - Fullstack

New York, NY · On-site

The Role We're hiring a founding engineer to build the core platform that powers our AI agents and ... Design secure, auditable data models and event-driven pipelines that power our agent workflows

Fuku

Founding Backend Engineer

New York, NY

$160K - $200K/yr

H-1B, O-1, OPT Role Summary As the Founding Backend Engineer, you will own and scale Client's data infrastructure, which powers search, personalization, and recommendations. You will work closely ...

Fuku

Founding Backend Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$160K - $200K/yr

As the Founding Backend Engineer, you will own and scale Client's data infrastructure, which powers search, personalization, and recommendations. You will work closely with the CTO and ML engineers ...

Clera

Founding Software Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$150K - $200K/yr

We're looking for a Founding Software Engineer to join our small, high-velocity team and help shape ... Design APIs, data models, and integrations with claims management systems and external platforms.

Clera

Founding Software Engineer

New York, NY · Remote

$150K - $200K/yr

We're looking for a Founding Software Engineer to join our small, high-velocity team and help shape ... Design APIs, data models, and integrations with claims management systems and external platforms.

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Founding Data Engineer information

What are the unique challenges and opportunities of being a founding data engineer at an early-stage startup?

As a Founding Data Engineer, you'll face the challenge of building data infrastructure from scratch, often with limited resources and evolving requirements. You’ll work closely with founders and cross-functional teams to define data strategies, implement pipelines, and ensure data quality. This role offers significant influence over technical decisions and architecture, and you'll likely wear multiple hats, contributing to both backend engineering and data analytics. The fast-paced environment fosters rapid skill development and provides substantial opportunities for career growth as the company scales.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a founding data engineer, and why are they important?

To thrive as a Founding Data Engineer, you need strong expertise in data architecture, database design, and software engineering, often backed by a degree in computer science or a related field. Familiarity with cloud platforms (like AWS or GCP), ETL frameworks, programming languages (such as Python or Scala), and data warehousing tools is typically required. Exceptional problem-solving, adaptability, and collaboration skills set standout candidates apart in this role. These abilities are crucial for building scalable data systems and shaping the technical foundation of an early-stage company.

What is the difference between Founding Data Engineer vs Data Engineer?

AspectFounding Data EngineerData Engineer
Required CredentialsBachelor's or higher in CS, experience in startup environmentsBachelor's or higher in CS, relevant data tools experience
Work EnvironmentEarly-stage startups, high flexibility, broad responsibilitiesEstablished companies, specialized roles, structured teams
Employer & Industry UsageFounding teams, startups, tech companiesTech firms, finance, healthcare, large organizations
Search & Comparison IntentUnderstanding startup data roles, early-stage responsibilitiesStandard data engineering roles, career progression

The main difference between a Founding Data Engineer and a Data Engineer lies in their work environment and responsibilities. Founding Data Engineers typically work in startups, handling broad tasks and building data infrastructure from scratch, while Data Engineers in established companies focus on specific data pipelines within structured teams. Both roles require similar technical skills and educational backgrounds, but their scope and context differ significantly.

What is a founding data engineer?

Founding Data Engineers are among the first technical hires at a startup, responsible for designing, building, and scaling the company's data infrastructure from the ground up. They work closely with founders and early team members to define data architecture, set up data pipelines, and ensure data quality and accessibility for product development and business insights. This role often requires a blend of software engineering, data modeling, and strategic decision-making skills, as well as the flexibility to adapt to rapidly changing priorities in a startup environment.
What are popular job titles related to Founding Data Engineer jobs in New York? For Founding Data Engineer jobs in New York, the most frequently searched job titles are:
What job categories do people searching Founding Data Engineer jobs in New York look for? The top searched job categories for Founding Data Engineer jobs in New York are:
What cities in New York are hiring for Founding Data Engineer jobs? Cities in New York with the most Founding Data Engineer job openings:
Founding Data Engineer jobs near you
Infographic showing various Founding Data Engineer job openings in New York as of July 2026, with employment types broken down into 1% As Needed, 83% Full Time, 12% Part Time, 1% Temporary, and 3% Contract. Highlights an 88% Physical, 3% Hybrid, and 9% Remote job distribution.

Founding Data Engineer

Holly

New York, NY • On-site

$170K - $216K/yr

Full-time

Medical, Dental, Vision, Retirement

Posted 4 days ago

Job description

Holly is the HR platform built for city and county government. We help local governments modernize how they hire, classify, and manage their workforce - work that directly shapes public services for millions of people. Our platform is live across 12 states with 60+ jurisdictions representing over 10% of the US population, including major counties like Santa Clara and Contra Costa in the Bay Area, Orange County in LA, and Snohomish County in Washington State. Demand is outpacing our team, and we're building to meet it.
Holly is a seed-stage team of 20+ operators with deep roots in public service, civic tech, and AI. We've raised $10M from leading investors in government technology and the future of work and have grown over 100X in the last year. We center public servants and impact in every decision, and we bring that same care to how we work here at Holly.
About the role
  • We're hiring our Founding Data Engineer to build the data backbone of Holly. Local governments publish enormous amounts of public information - salary schedules, job classifications, MOUs, budgets - but it's scattered across thousands of websites and buried in messy formats: scanned PDFs, inconsistent HTML, spreadsheets, and everything in between. Turning that chaos into clean, trustworthy, structured data is our single biggest data challenge and one of our deepest moats.
  • You'll design and build the data platform: the pipelines and systems that ingest public government data at scale, normalize and validate it, and serve it as clean, canonical datasets the rest of Holly's product builds on as its source of truth. Over time, you'll make this platform increasingly automated and intelligent - less manual wrangling, more self-healing, monitored, high-quality pipelines.
  • This is a hands-on, high-ownership building role. As the first data hire on a small engineering team, you'll set the direction, make the architecture calls, and establish the standards for how Holly collects, models, and trusts its data for years to come. You'll work directly with the founders and partner closely with our product engineers - your job is to make sure they always have the clean, reliable data they need to build features.
  • If you've worked with large, high-volume data and love the challenge of taming messy real-world inputs into something people can rely on, we'd love to talk.

What you'll do
You'll be our founding data engineer and a core partner to the founding team - owning the data platform end to end, making high-leverage technical decisions, and building the foundation the rest of the product depends on.
  • Own and Build the Data Platform
    • Own the data platform end-to-end - from raw public sources to clean, canonical datasets the product consumes
    • Design the architecture, schemas, and standards for how Holly ingests, models, and trusts its data
    • Partner with the founders to scope work, make tradeoffs, and drive delivery on our highest-leverage data initiatives
    • Set the long-term direction for our data foundation as the first data hire
  • Build Ingestion & Normalization Pipelines
    • Build systems that collect large volumes of public government data from thousands of local-government sources across the web
    • Turn messy, heterogeneous inputs - scanned PDFs, inconsistent HTML, spreadsheets - into structured, normalized data (parsing, extraction, OCR, dedupe, entity resolution, schema mapping)
    • Where it adds leverage, incorporate LLM-assisted extraction and embeddings into the pipeline
    • Build for freshness, reliability, and scale so data stays current and trustworthy
  • Model & Serve Data for the Product
    • Design canonical data models and domain schemas that product engineers build on
    • Expose clean, versioned, well-documented datasets the main app can reliably consume
    • Own data quality, validation, lineage, and observability so downstream teams can trust what they're building on
  • Make It Automated & Intelligent
    • Evolve pipelines from manual/one-off toward automated, self-healing, monitored systems
    • Establish data-quality checks, alerting, and standards that keep the platform reliable as it grows
    • Raise the bar on how we collect, validate, and serve data across the company

How we work
Six principles drive how we build. We keep the list short: if a principle wouldn't change a decision, we cut it:
  • Work on What Matters, Default to No - every yes has a cost, so we save them for what moves the business.
  • Question Everything, Be Opinionated - titles don't settle arguments; the better case wins. Push on the requirement, then take a position.
  • Obsess Over Craft - quality first, and we don't trade it for a date. If you wouldn't put your name on it, it doesn't ship.
  • Own It End to End - if you build it, you own it: to production, in tests, and when it breaks. "Done" means live, not merged.
  • Ship Small, Ship Often - the smallest thing that stands on its own, kept reversible. Small ships compound.
  • Automate the Hurt, Not the Itch - automate the recurring pain, not the one-off annoyance, and do the math first.

What you'll have
We'd love to talk if you're a strong data engineer with high ownership who has worked with large, high-volume data and knows how to turn messy real-world inputs into clean, trustworthy datasets.
Required
  • Are a senior data engineer with a strong track record building and operating production data systems (several years of relevant experience or equivalent)
  • Have worked with large-scale, high-volume data - ideally where lots of sources, users, or records make volume and reliability matter
  • Are strong at data modeling and SQL, with experience designing schemas that others build on (Postgres a plus)
  • Have built and owned ETL/ELT pipelines that handle messy, heterogeneous, real-world inputs (scraped data, PDFs, HTML, spreadsheets)
  • Bring a strong data-quality mindset - validation, testing, monitoring, lineage, and reliability are core to how you work
  • Take ownership and move fast - you work independently, ship often, and thrive in early-stage ambiguity
  • Have a growth mindset - you learn quickly, and raise the bar through collaboration and clear standards
  • Are pragmatic about tooling and comfortable working in (or ramping quickly into) a modern TypeScript/Postgres codebase

Bonus Points
  • Experience with large-scale web scraping / crawling, document extraction (OCR), or LLM-assisted parsing
  • Experience with embeddings / vector search or supporting ML/AI data workflows
  • Experience with analytical/columnar or warehouse stacks (ClickHouse, BigQuery, Snowflake) and/or streaming pipelines
  • Comfort in TypeScript/Node (our stack)
  • Experience in government, public sector, or civic tech
  • Prior early-stage startup experience

Don't meet every bullet? Apply anyways. If you're strong on most of this and excited about the work, we want to hear from you. We'll help you ramp on the rest.
What you'll get
  • Foundational ownership - Architect and build the data platform that will define our product and data model for years.
  • Technical influence - Make the high-leverage calls on data architecture, standards, and how we scale.
  • High-impact scope - Build the data foundation the entire product depends on, and see it power features customers rely on quickly.
  • Public-service impact - Your work improves how local governments operate, helping millions of Americans access public-service careers.
  • Competitive package - $170K - $216K base, 0.15-0.4% equity (L3), comprehensive health benefits (platinum plan, vision, dental), 401(k), paid parental leave, and a professional development stipend.

Ready to join us? A few important notes:
  • Location: This is an onsite role based out of our New York City HQ, four days a week (typically Mondays - Thursdays), with some flexibility depending on the role and the candidate. Candidates must reside in New York or be able to commute to our NYC office.
  • Applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S. without requiring sponsorship.
  • Work Philosophy: We're an early-stage startup serving government clients with real deadlines. There may be occasional off-hours work around launches or critical issues (rare and typically planned). We value flexibility and trust you to manage your schedule while maintaining a high bar for responsiveness and customer outcomes.

We're excited to build with you!
Team Holly
www.hollygov.com
Holly is committed to building a diverse company and working with the broadest talent pool possible. We encourage applications from all races, religions, national origins, genders, sexual orientations, gender identities, gender expressions, and ages, as well as veterans and individuals with disabilities.
The pay range for this role is:
170,000 - 216,000 USD per year (hq)

Apply