Startup Data Engineer Jobs (NOW HIRING)

Ready to play a key role in building the future of living? Join Samara in tackling California’s housing shortage and enabling people to attain sustainable housing without compromising design or quality. Our flagship product, Backyard, is a fully turnkey, premium accessory dwelling unit (ADU) designed for homeowners and real estate developers. As we expand our offerings and scale our in‑house development initiatives, we’re at a pivotal moment, redefining homeownership through high‑quality, attainable infill housing. Backed by top‑tier investors, including Airbnb, Thrive Capital, and 8VC, Samara is positioned for significant growth and market impact.

We are growing quickly and are looking to hire a Data Engineer to help scale our data and analytics capabilities. As the company grows, we need dedicated ownership of our data platform to ensure it continues to support high quality, timely decision making across the business.

This role will take end‑to‑end ownership of our data catalog, including understanding source systems, building and maintaining trusted core datasets, and translating operational and business data into decision‑ready datasets. You will work closely with Finance, Operations, and leadership to ensure data remains accessible, explainable, and useful as the organization and its needs continue to evolve.

Join Samara to help create new ways of living that help people dream bigger. Our flagship product, Backyard, is a fully turnkey, premium accessory dwelling unit (ADU) designed for California property owners and real estate developers.

• Build and Own Core Datasets. Design and maintain datasets that serve as sources of truth for key business reporting and decision making. Ensure datasets are accurate, consistent, and understandable by a broad set of stakeholders.
• Explore and Understand Source Systems. Develop a working understanding of source systems such as NetSuite, Salesforce, Autodesk Construction Cloud, Bill.com, and other operational platforms. Understand how data is generated and how it maps to business processes.
• Design Scalable Data Pipelines. Build, maintain, and monitor production data pipelines that meet current analytical needs and scale as data volume and complexity increase.
• Enable Access to High Quality Data. Help democratize access to reliable operational and financial data across Finance, Operations, and go‑to‑market teams. Ensure data products are well documented and suitable for self‑service analytics.
• Continuously Expand Analytical Coverage. Identify opportunities for new tables, metrics, and derived datasets that unlock additional insight. Evaluate work based on clarity and usefulness to decision‑makers.
• Establish Data Standards and Best Practices. Evolve standards for data modeling, testing, documentation, and ownership.

• 1‑3 years experience as a data engineer, building core datasets and supporting business verticals as needed.
• You have hands‑on experience shipping scalable data solutions in the cloud (e.g. AWS, Databricks, DBT), across multiple data methodologies (e.g. dimensional modeling, data marts, medallion schemas)
• Strong SQL and Data Modeling Skills. Advanced SQL proficiency with experience designing analytical data models that support reporting and analytics use cases.
• Comfort exploring source systems and tracing data through multiple layers of transformation.
• Ability and willingness to learn new systems, tools, and business domains. Comfortable working in environments where requirements and priorities evolve.

• Experience integrating financial, ERP, CRM, or payment systems such as NetSuite, Salesforce, Bill.com or similar tools.
• Comfort in aggregating data from multiple sources, with proficiency in handling APIs, geospatial imagery/aerial photography, unstructured web data, and public governmental records.
• Experience supporting feature engineering, forecasting, or AI‑adjacent analytics.
• You don’t need to be an AI expert, but you’re curious and willing to adopt AI tools to work smarter and deliver better results

• Be the first dedicated data engineer responsible for shaping how data is modeled, validated, and trusted across the company.
• Build datasets that support company wide reporting and decision making as the business scales.
• Work directly with leadership and cross‑functional teams to turn data into usable insight.
• Join a mission‑driven team solving California’s housing shortage through design, modular innovation, and responsible development.
• Gain equity ownership in a Series B startup positioned for rapid growth.

• Salary range of $120‑140K and performance‑based bonuses.
• Hybrid work schedule with 3 days each week in our Redwood City office.
• Snacks and Lunch on days in‑office.
• Early stage employee equity.
• Exceptional health, dental, and vision insurance.