The posting
Join Workiva's GRC (Governance, Risk & Compliance) Enablement team to build the transactional data foundations that power our product teams. As a Staff Data Engineer, you'll own Postgres schema design, transactional data models, and the extraction layer that feeds our OLAP systems. You'll work alongside an OLAP specialist on this team (same manager) to jointly own GRC data outcomes end to end, transactional models through BI and history marts, and you'll partner closely with the platform data team on shared infrastructure and tooling. Your job is to make sure GRC product teams have data systems that are reliable, well-modeled, and easy to build against, and to raise the data fluency of engineers across the org.
This is a heavily hands-on role. You'll design schemas, define extraction and CDC patterns, and mentor engineers who need to write better queries and reason about relational data at scale. Together with the OLAP specialist on this team, you'll own the full data lifecycle for GRC: transactional models, BI marts, and history marts.
What you'll do
Transactional database design & operations
- Design, review, and evolve Postgres schemas for GRC product services, balancing normalization, query performance, and application ergonomics.
- Set standards for indexing, constraints, partitioning, and connection pooling; identify and resolve performance bottlenecks in production.
- Own migration strategy and tooling (schema changes, backfills, zero-downtime deploys) across services.
OLTP-to-OLAP extraction (owned) / transformation (shared boundary with OLAP)
- Own change-data-capture and extraction: what leaves Postgres, in what shape, on what cadence, and how upstream schema changes are communicated before they break downstream models.
- Define the data contract at the landing zone with the OLAP specialist so extraction output is stable and well-documented; you own upstream reliability, they own what happens after landing.
- Where dbt/ETL logic sits closer to source-of-truth semantics (e.g., early-stage transaction or history-mart models), collaborate with the OLAP specialist to determine ownership on a per-project basis, documented explicitly rather than left implicit.
Data modeling & query performance
- Establish relational modeling patterns and review standards so engineers build consistent, maintainable schemas.
- Optimize SQL for transactional workloads (query plans, indexing strategy, lock contention, multi-join performance at scale).
- Define data contracts between services so schema changes don't silently break consumers, including downstream OLAP consumers.
Reliability, security & compliance
- Implement data integrity checks, replication/failover practices, and monitoring for transactional data health and extraction pipelines.
- Work within regulated release pipelines using GitOps/CI/CD; manage schema and pipeline promotions through dev/test/prod with gated approvals.
- Apply RBAC, audit logging, and encryption standards aligned with Workiva's information-protection policies, at the OLTP layer and extraction layer specifically.
Technical leadership & enablement
- Establish schema design patterns, SQL coding standards, and documentation so engineers can confidently build against Postgres without escalating every decision.
- Mentor engineers on relational modeling, query optimization, and transactional system fundamentals; lead incident resolution and root-cause analysis for production data issues, including extraction failures.
- Partner with the OLAP specialist to define and document where responsibility splits, and revisit that boundary as the platform matures.
- Partner with the platform data team on infrastructure decisions (warehouse provisioning, streaming infra, CI/CD tooling) while retaining ownership of GRC-specific schema design, modeling standards, and data quality outcomes; this team owns the "what and how" of GRC data models, platform data team owns the "on what infrastructure."
What you'll need
Minimum qualifications
- 5+ years in data engineering or backend engineering with hands-on ownership of production Postgres (or comparable relational OLTP) systems.
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
Preferred qualifications
- Expert-level SQL and strong understanding of query planning, indexing strategy, and transactional isolation levels.
- Proven experience owning schema design and migrations for production Postgres services at scale.
- Experience building CDC/extraction pipelines (Debezium, Kafka Connect, or similar) feeding a cloud warehouse.
- Experience in regulated or highly controlled environments with strict release governance and compliance requirements.
- Familiarity with connection pooling (PgBouncer or similar), replication, and backup/recovery strategy.
- Working knowledge of dbt sufficient to collaborate on shared models, even if dbt isn't your primary tool.
- Track record of mentoring engineers and driving cross-team technical standards.
Travel Requirements & Working Conditions
- Up to 10% travel for team jams and internal developer conference
- Reliable internet access for any period of time working remotely, not in a Workiva office
How You’ll Be Rewarded
✅ Salary range in the US: $149,000.00 - $240,000.00
✅ A discretionary bonus typically paid annually
✅ Restricted Stock Units granted at time of hire
✅ 401(k) match and comprehensive employee benefits package
The salary range represents the low and high end of the salary range for this job in the US. Minimums and maximums may vary based on location. The actual salary offer will carefully consider a wide range of factors, including your skills, qualifications, experience and other relevant factors.
Why Join Workiva
Workiva is the platform designed to bring confidence, control, and a competitive edge to the world’s most complex organizations. Our AI-powered platform unifies finance, risk, and sustainability on a single, secure foundation—ensuring data is trusted, traceable, and ready to act on. With an unbroken path from source to output, leaders gain confidence in their numbers, visibility into current and emerging risks, and the ability to move with speed and precision in a constantly changing world.
At Workiva, you’ll bring technology to market that executives, boards, and regulators depend on. The work you do here helps organizations navigate uncertainty, maintain trust, and make decisions that stand up to scrutiny. If you’re energized by meaningful challenges, inspired by collaborative teams, and motivated to help organizations turn uncertainty into advantage, we’d love to meet you.
Employment decisions are made without regard to age, race, creed, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, disability status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, citizenship status or any other protected characteristic.
Workiva is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities. To request assistance with the application process, please email [email protected].
Workiva employees are required to undergo comprehensive security and privacy training tailored to their roles, ensuring adherence to company policies and regulatory standards.
Workiva supports employees in working where they work best - either from an office or remotely from any location within their country of employment.
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