Senior Data Engineer — Conduit

Conduit's FactoryOS platform allows manufacturers to scale production-ready automation solutions in days, not months. With a suite of powerful applications, we allow manufacturers to automate faster and smarter by coordinating every robot, machine, and system on one platform. At Conduit, our mission is to give every American manufacturer the power to automate their factories at lightning speed.

We're already deployed in production at top manufacturers and growing fast. Backed by leading investors, and built by a team that moves at startup speed with deep conviction in American industrial dominance.

The Role

Factories generate enormous volumes of data from CNC telemetry streaming at millisecond intervals to production records spanning years of operation. Most of it is siloed, underutilized, or lost entirely. We're changing that.

We're looking for a Senior Data Engineer who can own the full lifecycle of manufacturing data at Conduit from designing the databases and pipelines that ingest high-frequency machine telemetry, to building the analytics and models that turn that data into actionable intelligence for factory operators. This is a single role that spans DBA, backend engineering, and data science because at our stage, the person closest to the data should be shaping every layer of the stack.

You'll be the foundational hire for our data infrastructure. You'll work directly with the founders and be on factory floors understanding the problems firsthand.

What You'll Do

• Own our data infrastructure. Design, optimize, and scale our time-series and relational databases (TimescaleDB, PostgreSQL) to handle high-frequency telemetry from hundreds of machines streaming concurrently.
• Build data pipelines end-to-end. Architect ETL/ELT pipelines that ingest, transform, and route data from robots (ROS) or industrial protocols (MQTT, Sparkplug B, OPC UA) into queryable, reliable storage.
• Deliver analytics and BI. Build dashboards and reporting systems that give manufacturers real-time visibility into cycle times, OEE, downtime, and production trends.
• Apply data science where it matters. Develop predictive models for use cases like predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, and process optimization, grounded in real production data, not academic exercises.
• Handle high-frequency telemetry at scale. Design systems that can ingest, downsample, aggregate, and serve machine data streaming at sub-second intervals without dropping packets or blowing up storage.
• Break down data silos. Integrate across MES, ERP, SCADA, and custom machine interfaces to create a unified data layer that didn't exist before.
• Collaborate across the stack. Work closely with our backend, ML, robotics, and frontend teams to ensure data infrastructure supports everything from real-time robot coordination to customer-facing analytics.

You

• 5+ years of experience spanning database administration, backend engineering, and data analysis/science — ideally all three, not just one.
• Deep PostgreSQL / time-series database expertise. You've tuned queries, designed schemas for high-write workloads, managed partitioning strategies, and operated databases that actually matter in production.
• Strong Python backend skills. You build services, not just notebooks. Production-grade code with proper error handling, testing, and observability.
• Experience with high-frequency data ingestion. You've worked with streaming technologies (Kafka, RabbitMQ, ZeroMQ, MQTT) and understand the challenges of ingesting, storing, and querying data that arrives at thousands of messages per second.
• Proven ETL/pipeline architecture. You've designed and maintained data pipelines that are reliable, idempotent, and observable — not fragile scripts held together with cron jobs.
• Analytics and modeling chops. You can build a dashboard, run a regression, and deploy a predictive model. You know when a simple SQL query beats a neural network.
• You've operated at scale AND at a startup. You understand what good looks like from working at scale, but you know how to move fast, cut scope intelligently, and ship with limited resources.
• Availability to work EST hours.

Bonus Points

• Experience with TimescaleDB, InfluxDB, or other purpose-built time-series databases
• Familiarity with manufacturing systems (MES, ERP, SCADA, PLCs, CNC controllers)
• Background in IIoT protocols (MQTT/Sparkplug B, OPC UA)
• Experience with Kubernetes, Terraform, and infrastructure as code
• Familiarity with real-time dashboarding tools (Grafana, Metabase, custom)
• Experience with anomaly detection or predictive maintenance in industrial settings

What We Offer

• Top-tier pay and equity. We want to make it easy to join Conduit.
• Generational opportunity. Be early at a company defining the software layer for industrial automation.
• American re-industrialization is happening. We're building the platform to make it real — faster.
• Zero bureaucracy. High impact. You'll be on the front lines, solving real problems for real factories.
• You will level up. You'll work directly with the founders and exec team — and grow into a senior operator.