Senior Data Engineer

Senior Data Engineer - Careers @ Nerdy

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Nerdy

Senior Data Engineer

Data Science & Analytics

Oct 9

Written By Kimberly Rutland

Overview:

As the Senior Data Engineer, you will own the pipelines and platform that move Nerdy's data from source systems into a governed lakehouse. You'll build streaming and batch ingestion, run the Iceberg lakehouse on Starburst Galaxy, and ship reliable, well-tested dbt layers that analytics engineers and analysts build on-leveraging AI to accelerate development, QA, and operations.

About Nerdy:

At Nerdy (NYSE: NRDY) - the company behind Varsity Tutors - we're redrawing the blueprint of learning. Our Live + AI platform fuses real-time human expertise with proprietary generative-AI systems, setting a new bar for measurable academic impact at global scale.

We recruit the kind of technologists and operators you'd bet on as solo founders - people who turn ambiguous problems into shipping code, iterate faster than markets move, and compound their advantage with every data point. In an era where great employees can deliver 10-times the leverage of the merely good, we back those who play to win.

Fortune favors the bold. Join us.

How we compete:

• AI-Native at every level

From the CEO to day-one hires, everyone builds and ships with generative AI. If you're not wielding AI, you're not done.

• Entrepreneurial velocity

Move at founder speed, prototype in hours, and measure in real user outcomes. Slow teams die.

• Free-market rigor

Ideas rise or fall on merit and results - no committees, no politics, no cap on upside.

• Full-stack ownership

You design, build, and run what you ship; accountability is a feature, not a bug.

• Reward for contribution

Pay rises with impact, not years. Outstanding results earn outsized rewards. We evaluate both what you achieve and how you achieve it: living our leadership principles and using AI effectively are formally measured and rewarded.

• Relentless exploration

Push the frontier of generative AI in live learning and - because only the paranoid survive - questioning every legacy assumption along the way.

• Is Apolitical

You stay focused on mission-aligned outcomes, not distractions or unrelated causes.

If you're a technically minded builder who thrives on open competition, personal responsibility, and the chance to redefine how the world learns - while continually stretching the limits of what generative AI can do - come do the most ambitious and rewarding work of your career here. Learn more at nerdy.com.

Nerdy's shareholder letters below explain our latest products and strategy:

• Q2-2026 Shareholder Letter

• Q1-2026 Shareholder Letter

• Q4-2025 Shareholder Letter

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Math/Stats, or equivalent experience.

• 3+ years as a Data Engineer (or similar) in high-growth environments.

• Expert SQL and strong Python; experience building production pipelines that run unattended and recover on their own.

• Hands-on with open table formats and lakehouse engines: Iceberg on Trino/Starburst Galaxy, or similar (Delta Lake, Hudi, Spark, Databricks, Presto/Athena).

• Streaming experience with Kafka/Confluent or similar (Kinesis, Redpanda), including schema registry, CDC (e.g., Debezium), and idempotent loading into lakehouse tables.

• Proficiency with dbt and dbt Cloud (incremental models, macros, tests, docs) and orchestration tools such as Airflow or Dagster.

• Solid AWS experience (S3, IAM, Glue/REST catalogs) and infrastructure as code (Terraform or similar).

• Solid grasp of data modeling, partitioning, incremental processing, and backfill strategy on large datasets.

• Git-based development and CI/CD familiarity; disciplined approach to reviews, releases, and on-call.

• Experienced with AI-native tools that enhance productivity and speed (e.g., Cursor, Make, Supabase, Netlify, Claude Code, n8n, Firecrawl, ChatGPT, Grok, Bolt, Vercel, etc).

• Alignment with Nerdy's apolitical, mission-focused culture.

Responsibilities:

• Ingestion & streaming: Build and run streaming and batch ingestion from Kafka and third-party APIs into Iceberg tables; own CDC, schema evolution, and late-arriving data.

• Lakehouse platform: Operate the Iceberg lakehouse on Starburst Galaxy (Trino)-table layout, partitioning, compaction, retention, and cluster sizing.

• Layered modeling with dbt: Build and maintain the bronze, silver, and gold layers with incremental models, idempotent merges, and safe backfills; push shared logic upstream so downstream consumers stay simple.

• Orchestration & reliability: Design dbt Cloud job schedules, dependencies, retries, and alerting; keep production jobs within their freshness SLAs and drive incidents to root cause.

• Data quality & governance: Implement tests, contracts, freshness and volume monitoring, lineage, and access controls; handle PII within privacy and security guardrails.

• Performance & cost: Tune queries, file layout, and cluster usage to improve speed and manage compute and storage spend.

• Infrastructure as code: Manage clusters, storage, and access through Terraform and CI, with changes that are reviewed, reversible, and documented.

• Collaboration: Partner with Analytics Engineering, Product Engineering, and business teams to turn source changes and new requirements into dependable data products.

• Documentation & change control: Maintain versioned code (Git), review PRs, run CI/CD for pipelines and dbt, and document sources, models, and runbooks.

• AI-enabled workflows: Use AI for code generation/review, test scaffolding, pipeline debugging, data profiling, and anomaly detection-operating within privacy and security guardrails.

Unleash Your Potential at Nerdy:

At Nerdy, you''ll earn your success through meritocracy and exceptional outcomes. Our benefits reward performance and initiative:

• Competitive USD-Benchmarked Compensation: Earn a market-leading rate set in U.S. dollars, paid to you in local currency.

• 100% Remote (Home Country Only): Work from anywhere in your home country-no relocation required, no borders crossed.

• Flexible Time Off: Our flexible PTO lets you recharge on your own terms and when you need it the most.

• Local Holiday Pay: We honor your nation's official holidays with paid time off-celebrate what matters to you.

• Continuous Learning: Get a free, all-inclusive learning membership for you and your household-including 1-on-1 tutoring hours, unlimited on-demand classes, and access to our full suite of learning products and services.

• Supercharge with AI: Gain exclusive access to cutting-edge AI tools that boost your productivity, making you feel almost super-human (cape not included).

• Feedback-Rich, Collaborative Culture: Tap into regular training, peer reviews, and a team that treats every team member as a vital collaborator and owner in our success.

• Make a Global Impact: Your expertise fuels an innovative platform used by learners around the world-be part of something transformative.

The Bottom Line:

If you''re driven by impact, energized by ownership, and excited to help shape what's next, you'll thrive here. We move fast, think big, and reward those who deliver. This isn't a traditional corporate environment - it's a place to do the most meaningful work of your career.

Apply

Kimberly Rutland

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Staff Data Scientist, Forecasting & Optimization

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