Principal Software Engineer - Data
Lyric · Remote · BLR/Chennai · Remote - EU ·
COMPENSATION
€•• – ••k
Listed on the employer's job board (Ashby)
- Principal IC role
- Hybrid India / Remote EU
- Data platform ownership
- Semantic layer focus
- Mentors senior engineers
You will lead the development of the data platform that powers Lyric's AI agents and products. The core challenge is building a robust semantic layer, including entity models and knowledge graphs, that allows reliable querying by automated systems.
This is a principal individual contributor role where you will define technical direction, write production code, and ensure system correctness and reliability across a multi-tenant environment.
What you'll do
- Own the semantic layer, including entity models, ontology, and knowledge graphs
- Build APIs that applications and AI agents use to query data
- Manage data foundations such as ingestion, contracts, schema evolution, and storage
- Ensure correctness and reliability in a multi-tenant product environment
- Handle recovery from hard incidents and maintain system durability
- Set technical direction through RFCs and design reviews
- Mentor senior engineers and raise the overall engineering bar
What you'll need
- Proven experience building and owning data platforms or semantic layers in production
- Background with knowledge graphs, metadata layers, metrics layers, or entity models
- Strong systems reasoning skills regarding durability, failure, and scale limits
- Experience building a product from zero to production scale at a startup
- Active producer of production code and fluent user of AI coding tools
- Ability to lead senior engineers through influence and clear communication
Nice to have
- Experience with property graphs or RDF/SPARQL
- Knowledge of entity resolution or master data management
- Familiarity with Spark, Kafka, Flink, or Iceberg
- Background in durable execution systems
- Deep understanding of systems performance
- Prior work with supply chain data
Stack
- Spark
- Kafka
- Flink
- Iceberg
- RDF
- SPARQL
How you'll work
- Hybrid work model in Bengaluru or Chennai
- Fully remote option available for candidates in Europe
- Hands-on principal individual contributor role
Hiring process
- Initial screening with a recruiter
- Exploration call with engineering leadership
- Deep dive discussion on a system you previously built
- Take-home build assignment using any AI tools
- Presentation of the build to a senior engineering panel
- Final conversation focused on leadership and values