Principal Data Engineer (Remote)

Who We Are At 8th Light, we bring life to the best ideas. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Chicago, we are a technology solutions consultancy that partners with organizations from early-stage startups to the world's largest companies. We take on hard software challenges and turn them into durable results. We build agentic products, the platforms they run on, and the engineering and design at every layer. Our commitment to quality means we deliver solutions we’re truly proud of, while our curiosity sparks innovation and breakthrough thinking. 8th Lights thrive in an environment that champions continuous education, fueling our growth through mentorship and hands-on work. We foster an open, collaborative culture grounded in honesty that builds trust, and believe true success is measured by the outcomes we create for our clients. If this kind of work and our kind of people energizes you, you’ve found the right place. Who You Are You've shown long-term repeated success delivering data platforms, typically over the course of 10+ years in software and 7+ years in data engineering, with a clear progression into technical leadership and architectural ownership. You're the person a team leans on to shape data strategy, design scalable solutions, and stay hands-on when the hard part needs solving. In your previous experience, you have: Owned the architecture and delivery of modern data platforms end-to-end Built deep expertise in Databricks and modern lakehouse architecture, including Delta Lake and Spark-based processing Worked at an advanced level in SQL and Python, building and optimizing large-scale data pipelines Worked hands-on with cloud platforms, including their data services and infrastructure design Applied strong data modeling, ETL/ELT patterns, and distributed data processing to real client problems Used orchestration tools and transformation frameworks in production Led technical delivery while staying hands-on when the work called for it Partnered directly w