Data Engineer, People Analytics

Notion Notion · Enterprise · San Francisco, CA · Engineering

Data Engineer focused on building and operating scalable data systems and pipelines for People Analytics. The role involves ingesting and standardizing HR data, designing privacy-first architecture, implementing data quality and observability, and creating data models and transformations to support analytics and AI-driven people workflows. The engineer will partner with leadership to translate strategic questions into data products and ensure data reliability, security, and governance.

What you'd actually do

  1. Partner closely with the Chief People Officer and People leadership team to translate strategic questions into clear metrics and data products that inform workforce planning, organization design, performance reviews, compensation discussions, and executive reporting
  2. Define and build ETL/ELT pipelines and infrastructure to ingest and standardize data from HRIS and adjacent systems such as Workday, ATS, payroll, benefits, performance platforms, creating a reliable source of truth for headcount, org structure, hiring, attrition, and talent health
  3. Design privacy-first data architecture, including access controls, PII handling, and governance standards
  4. Implement data quality, testing, and observability systems to ensure sensitive employee data is accurate and trustworthy
  5. Design privacy-aware data models, transformations, semantic layers, and quality checks so sensitive employee data is accurate, timely, well-documented, and governed appropriately with role-based access controls for decision-making and makes AI-powered people tools and automations reliable enough to ship to production

Skills

Required

  • 6+ years of experience in analytics engineering, data engineering, people analytics, or a closely related role
  • Hands-on experience working with HRIS and adjacent People systems data (for example Workday, ATS (Ashby), payroll, benefits, performance, or engagement platforms)
  • Proficiency in SQL and data modeling
  • Proficiency in Python (or similar OOP languages) for building data pipelines, automation, and infrastructure
  • Experience designing systems with data quality, testing, monitoring, and SLAs in mind
  • Experience with modern data tooling and cloud warehouses such as Snowflake, dbt, Airflow, Fivetran, or similar technologies
  • Excellent judgment with sensitive and confidential data
  • Effectiveness in partnering directly with the CPO, People Partners, Finance, and business leaders
  • Ability to leverage AI and agent-based tools to accelerate development, while defining guardrails for safe, production-grade data workflows

Nice to have

  • You have worked at a fast-growing start-up, a SaaS company or are eager to contribute in such an environment (being a current Notion user would be great!)

What the JD emphasized

  • sensitive employee data
  • privacy guarantees
  • privacy-first data architecture
  • PII handling
  • governance standards
  • privacy-aware data models
  • role-based access controls
  • AI-powered people tools and automations reliable enough to ship to production
  • Ability to leverage AI and agent-based tools to accelerate development, while defining guardrails for safe, production-grade data workflows