Afresh, the AI platform for grocery, began by tackling the most complex problem in the industry: fresh, and has evolved into the core AI platform for grocers. Afresh partners with retailers like Albertsons, Meijer, and Wakefern, and has prevented over 200 million pounds of food waste.
About the Role:
As a Senior Staff Data Engineer at Afresh, you'll be one of the most senior individual contributors, setting technical direction for how Afresh builds, integrates, and scales the data systems that power its products. You'll own some of the most complex and ambiguous data problems end to end, from raw data ingestion through transformation and delivery to downstream product and ML teams. This is a hands-on, high-ownership role, deep in the code and architecture while influencing direction across teams and mentoring other engineers.
Responsibilities:
- Architect and build core data systems and pipelines that power Afresh products, owning reliability and quality from raw data through to production
- - Take on the most ambiguous, high-leverage data problems and drive them to a shipped solution
- - Set technical direction: define the architecture, patterns, and abstractions that make customer integrations and product dataflows faster and more repeatable
- - Drive data quality and pipeline reliability, investing in better alerting, self-healing patterns, and resilience to messy customer data
- - Champion AI-forward engineering: evaluate and adopt AI tools and agentic workflows that accelerate development
- - Raise the technical bar: review code and architecture decisions, pair with engineers on hard problems, mentor across the team
- - Collaborate with Product, ML, Solutions Engineering, and customer-facing teams
Requirements:
- 8+ years building data engineering systems, with a track record of operating at a staff or principal level
- - Deep technical expertise across Python, PySpark, SQL, dbt, Airflow, and modern data platforms (Databricks, Snowflake, or similar)
- - History of shipping high-quality data integrations or ETL systems at scale
- - Proven ability to own ambiguous, end-to-end problems and set technical direction with no established playbook
- - Genuine enthusiasm for AI-augmented engineering
- - Comfort working with messy, real-world data from enterprise customers
- - Strong collaboration and influence skills across engineering, product, and customer-facing teams
Tech Stack: Python, PySpark, dbt, Databricks (Delta Lake, Unity Catalog), Astronomer (Airflow), Claude, GitHub, Shortcut, Notion
Salary Range: $191,000 - $287,000
Benefits:
Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with the majority of premiums covered by Afresh, dedicated mental health support, competitive base salary, meaningful equity, 401(k) with company match, home office stipend, annual professional development budget, monthly wellness and telecommunications stipends, and flexible paid time off.
For more information or to apply, visit the Afresh careers site. Location: United States (Remote). Afresh provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment.
