Software Engineer (L6) - Technical Catalog

Netflix is one of the world's leading entertainment services, with over 300 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, films and games across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can play, pause and resume watching as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, and can change their plans at any time.

The Data Platform teams at Netflix enable us to leverage data to bring joy to our members in many different ways. We provide centralized data platforms and tools for various business functions at Netflix, so they can utilize our data to make critical data-driven decisions. We do all the heavy lifting to make it easy for our business partners to work with data efficiently, securely, and responsibly. We aspire to lead the industry standard in building a world-class data infrastructure, as Netflix leads the way to be the most popular and pervasive destination for global internet entertainment.

The Technical Catalog (TC) is Netflix's global catalog of all technical assets — spanning data, software, ML/AI, pipelines, and infrastructure. TC unifies legacy catalogs into a single, extensible metadata backbone, enabling discoverability, governance, and automation at scale. As we drive this transformation, we are seeking a Staff Engineer (L6) to architect, lead, and deliver the next evolution of our metadata platform.

In this role, you will:

• Lead the architecture and evolve a universal, relationship-centric catalog, focusing on entity modeling, typed relationships, and a canonical inventory graph.

• Work closely with product managers and customers to define the technical strategy and roadmap for data discovery and governance at Netflix.

• Act as a liaison between Data Platform and other organizations to build a cohesive Metadata Strategy across Netflix as we expand beyond streaming into Live, Ads and Games.

• Champion data quality and governance by building validation engines, rules platforms, and automated health checks to ensure metadata completeness, freshness, and compliance.

• Mentor and empower senior engineers and cross-functional partners, fostering strong technical decision-making and a culture of shared ownership.

• Model operational excellence by driving improvements in reliability, incident response, and long-term operational best practices.

• Stay ahead of industry trends in metadata management, graph technologies, and compliance, guiding build-vs-buy and technology adoption decisions.

• Measure impact via adoption, data health metrics, onboarding speed, and downstream business enablement.

• Exemplify and hold others accountable for demonstrating Netflix’s culture.

Qualifications:

• 12+ years of experience building complex, distributed systems at scale, ideally with expertise in graph databases, metadata platforms, or catalog systems.

• Proficiency in Java, C++, Golang, or Python; strong grasp of multi-threading, memory management, and API design.

• Deep experience with entity modeling, relationship management, and federated architectures (GraphQL a plus).

• Track record of building customer-facing platforms with a focus on extensibility, data quality, and automation.

• Technical leadership in driving migrations, platform adoption, and cross-functional alignment.

• Passion for governance, data health, and compliance, with experience building or integrating validation, rules engines, or data quality frameworks.

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills; ability to mentor, influence, and drive consensus across diverse stakeholders.

You will be successful in this role if you:

• Shine when you have to balance complex customer, engineering, and other stakeholder needs, and are obsessed with optimizing for the customer whenever possible

• Have the ability to define and lead cross-functional projects, navigate ambiguity, and bring clarity to the direction.

• Advocate thoughtful collaboration, take pride in your work, and enjoy taking full ownership of projects from conception to production.

• Easily shift from tactical to strategic approaches and demonstrate good judgment in identifying technical gaps and opportunities across solutions and teams.

• Provide mentorship to other engineers learning new professional skills, overcoming new challenges, and earning promotions to new roles.

Nice to have:

• Experience with AI/ML for metadata enrichment, anomaly detection, or automation.

• Experience building or integrating with catalog systems like DataHub, Amundsen, or similar.

Inclusion is a Netflix value and we strive to host a meaningful interview experience for all candidates. If you want an accommodation/adjustment for a disability or any other reason during the hiring process, please send a request to your recruiting partner.

We are an equal-opportunity employer and celebrate diversity, recognizing that diversitybuilds stronger teams. We approach diversity and inclusion seriously and thoughtfully. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service.

Job is open for no less than 7 days and will be removed when the position is filled.