Lead Data Platform Engineer

About us

Publift is a dynamic Adtech company dedicated to empowering online publishers and websites to maximize their revenue from display ads. We are passionate about driving publisher growth and have an amazing team committed to this mission.

Our innovative product boasts an impressive track record, delivering a remarkable 55% increase in revenue for publishers on average. This transformative impact can be especially profound for small businesses, a fact we take pride in.

Fuelled by recent enhancements in our sales capacity and product development efforts, Publift has experienced a rapid increase in growth. Currently achieving 60% year-over-year growth.

Join us as we embark on this exciting journey of growth and innovation at Publift.

We embrace a hybrid way of working – mixing working from home with the energy and connection that comes from being together in the office. We champion flexibility and have many policies, procedures and leave options to support flexible work.  

Whats on offer.

• We’re proud to be recognised as one of Australia’s Best Workplaces™ by Great Place to Work®, a Family Friendly Workplace, a WORK180 endorsed employer for women and WGEA Employer of Choice for Gender Equality.
• The support of a highly engaged, high-performing team including a leadership team that you’ll actually have face time with.
• 24 weeks paid parental leave for primary caregivers, four weeks paid secondary caregivers leave, six weeks paid gender affirming care leave.
• Regular Hackathons, endless learning and development opportunities, and a range of activities that will help support your mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing

Are you a seasoned data professional passionate about building cutting-edge cloud data platforms? Publift is seeking a Lead Data Platform Engineer to lead the design, build, and optimization of our modern data platform on Google Cloud. This is a unique opportunity to shape our data strategy and enable scalable analytics, AI, and enterprise data solutions.

About the role

As a Lead Data Platform Engineer, you will be a key leader in our Data team. You will be responsible for:

• Architecting and Delivering: Designing and implementing an enterprise-scale cloud data platform using Google Cloud services and modern data architecture patterns (data lakes, lakehouses, modern data stack).
• Data Pipeline Ownership: Taking full ownership of modern, scalable data pipelines and platforms, ensuring they are high-performing, reliable, secure, and aligned with enterprise standards.
• Strategic Collaboration: Translating complex business needs into robust data solutions by collaborating closely with key stakeholders.
• Best Practice Champion: Embedding best practices in data engineering, architecture, and governance across the organization.
• AI and Data Enablement: Contributing to the design, build, and operation of our enterprise data platform, data source integrations, and data cleaning/governance/compliance tooling.
• Team Productivity: Enabling decision-making through data and analytics capabilities, and enhancing team productivity with AI and data-enabled tools.

What are we looking for?

• Strong software engineering background with expertise in developing and delivering enterprise-grade data solutions.
• Deep expertise in cloud data platforms and pipelines, particularly with Google Cloud data services (BigQuery, GCS, Dataplex, Data Catalog, Pub/Sub, Dataflow).
• Proficiency in Python, SQL, Javascript, with hands-on experience in designing and building secure, scalable, high-performance applications and data pipelines.
• Practical experience with CI/CD practices (e.g., CircleCI, Jenkins) and Git for version control.
• Strong understanding of modern data architectures, such as lakehouse design, and data specialized file formats (Parquet, Avro).
• Experience with scripting and automation using tools like Jupyter notebooks for data exploration and transformation.
• Sound knowledge of data governance, security, privacy, and compliance requirements.
• Deep knowledge of data modeling, warehousing, partitioning/clustering strategies.
• Experience with monitoring, reliability engineering, and observability for data systems.
• Familiarity with data governance, lineage, and security policies (IAM, DLP, encryption).
• Startup or scale-up experience (fast-moving, resource-constrained environments) is a plus.
• Outstanding communication and problem-solving skills, with a collaborative leadership style.
• Proven ability to build and maintain strong stakeholder relationships.

A few other things we want to let you know about...

• Publift is an equal opportunity employer who prides themselves on fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We encourage everyone of all ages, genders and backgrounds to apply. If you’re a candidate with a disability or you’ll need some adjustments to be at your best, let us know how we can provide you with additional support.
• We believe work satisfaction comes from two things: working in an unbelievably great team and solving customer problems that matter.  
• Our flat organisation structure allows us to be nimble and innovative to drive both customer and personal growth.
• We know how important keeping that balance between work/life is and have a range of flexible working options on offer, including part time. We are open to this conversation during our recruitment process if you want to know more just ask!
• We are a proud Circle Back Initiative Employer which means we are committed to responding to every job applicant.
• Successful candidates joining the publift are required to undergo a National Police Record check and must have full-time Australian working rights on an ongoing basis.