---
title: 'Senior Data Systems Engineer at January'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-data-systems-engineer-january-new-york-4yp13wgv66qt'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-12'
---

# Senior Data Systems Engineer at January

- **Company:** January
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Compensation:** $200k–$231k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-10-08
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-12
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/january/a1a3571f-1f72-44b1-973f-768d35d31b09

## Job description

Collections today works like an emergency room. The doctors carry too many patients, everyone arrives at their worst moment, and nobody has their chart. We're making it primary care. January personalizes interactions and optimizes decisions across every stage of consumer credit. We started in the hardest, most broken stage, because if it works there it works anywhere.

Most consumers want to pay what they owe. They want a way out, not a break. We've serviced over $20 billion in debt across more than 20 million consumers. We see more people with charged-off loans each year than all but the top five US banks. Those consumers rate us about 50% higher than the banks that lent them the money. Creditors net over 30% more because we collect more and charge less.

Most AI strips the human out of the work. We use it to make someone's hardest financial moment more human. The more human we make it, the more people recover. Now we're moving upstream, catching people before they default and building across every stage of the consumer credit lifecycle. The consumer in collections today is the consumer who gets approved tomorrow. As our first Data Systems Engineer, you'll own the foundation under every decision we make: what data lands, what our reports say, and what we offer to consumers. When the data is right, someone in their hardest financial moment gets an offer that fits their life. When it's wrong, they get the wrong balance, the wrong call, or nothing at all.

## About the Role

We're hiring our first data systems engineer. Data is the most valuable thing January has: 20 million consumers, $20 billion in debt, and every record behind them. Every decision we make about a consumer starts with our data. As we grow our business, it’s critical that our data system scales with it. The data that powers collections now has to power every stage of consumer credit. You'll decide what that foundation looks like and how it grows. This is a blank page. What gets built, in what order, and how this function interacts with downstream consumers is yours to decide. You'll set the standard for how we treat our data: trusted by default, understood by everyone who touches it, and increasingly able to look after itself. Engineers, analysts, ops, and product all depend on what you build. You'll set the standards that let them make good calls on data without you in the room. You thrive on obsessing over data quality and infrastructure, and you move fast to improve both.

## What We Need

- You've built and owned a data pipeline end to end.
- You design for failure. Safe replayability, recovery that self heals where possible and has a clear runbook when it doesn’t
- You treat data quality as a key indicator of pipeline health
- You can own migrating a legacy system into a durable data pipeline by identifying the highest impact opportunities first, and you know when to build vs. buy.
- You've collaborated with multiple stakeholders/data consumers, with an ability to manage asks and hold boundaries where they need to be held
- You draw ownership lines through writing and influence instead of authority, and explain tradeoffs equally well to engineers and non-engineers.
- You already use AI deeply in your own work and want to go further, including by architecting systems that repair themselves.
- You love building 0 to 1, and you want the shape of a function to be yours.
- 4+ years in software engineering, data engineering or data platforms.

## How We Work

- Decentralization beats control. The best calls get made by the people closest to them, not routed up a chain. You'll set the standards that let the team decide without you in the room.
- Speed beats perfection. You run tight loops, act at 70% on reversible calls and adjust as you learn. Fast loops beat slow ones.
- Candor beats comfort. You'd rather hear a hard truth early than a polite sidestep that wastes everyone's time.
- Writing beats the average meeting. Clarity scales.
- AI runs through everything here. 95% of our consumer interactions are AI-driven. Internally, we've built an LLM code reviewer and approver. We benchmark coding agents against real tickets so we can automate more of them. Over the last six months, Engineering has doubled how much we can ship. Non-technical teams are just as fluent in AI - anyone can spin up a custom LLM Slackbot, and everyone consistently builds AI tools and skills that are shipped org-wide.
- We operate at every altitude. No one here lives only on Mount Olympus, not even the leaders. We get into the trenches to learn the ground truth. We constantly refine our information flows so that our decisions are driven by the best, most up to date inputs.
- We build in person, at least three days a week in our office in Nolita, with a growing group coming in every day. Random run-ins cross-pollinate ideas. Face time builds trust no thread can. Building alongside people makes work far more fun.

As a New York City-based company, we are dedicated to transparent, fair, and equitable compensation practices that reflect our commitment to fostering an environment where all team members are valued and supported. We encourage individuals from all backgrounds to apply.

We are an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, age, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic.

## About January

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Fintech / AI-powered debt collection and consumer credit
- Target customers: B2B – OCC-regulated banks, top fintech companies, card issuers, and debt buyers
- Mission: "Expand access to credit while empowering consumers to achieve lasting stability and control of their financial lives" – bringing humanity to consumer finance.

## Products & Services
- **January AI Platform**: An AI-driven debt collection system that handles the full consumer engagement lifecycle across voice, SMS, and chat. It authenticates consumers, handles payments and settlements, and resolves 95% of interactions without a live agent. The platform uses behavioral signals from every conversation to continuously improve recovery strategies.
- **Voice AI**: AI-powered voice calls that adapt to each consumer, handling authentication, payment, and FAQ end-to-end.
- **Consumer Self-Service**: Borrowers can resolve balances on their own terms via flexible payment plans, lump-sum settlements, or hardship options, all under the creditor’s brand.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: "10s of millions in revenue" with strong growth, retention, margins, and profitability. Over $20 billion in debt worked across 20+ million consumers.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Works with OCC-regulated banks, top fintech companies, card issuers, and debt buyers. Specific investor names not publicly listed.
- **Growth Signals**: 111 total employees (57 in product + tech). Over 1 billion decisions have trained the AI models since launch. 40% of new placements involve consumers already worked before, indicating strong retention and network effects. Hybrid work model with offices in NYC and SF.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Higher recovery rates**: 30%+ higher net recoveries and 38% higher liquidation rates compared to historically leading agencies.
- **Lower complaint rate**: 6x lower than the industry average.
- **Superior consumer experience**: Consumers rate January 50% higher than their original lender.
- **Compliance-first architecture**: Cloud-native, zero-trust, ephemeral computing environments, SOC 2 Type II certified, annual third-party penetration testing, and complete audit trails for every PII access.
- **Data moat**: Every interaction generates behavioral signals that feed back into the models, creating a self-reinforcing learning loop.

## Strategic Focus
- Scaling the AI platform to replace the $20 billion debt collection industry.
- Expanding product capabilities across the entire debt lifecycle (from early-stage to recovery).
- Hiring senior engineering, data science, product management, and security talent to support growth.
- Maintaining best-in-class software metrics (retention, margins, profitability) while working with the most sophisticated financial institutions.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: "Bring humanity to consumer finance" – a mission-driven team focused on trust and financial empowerment.
- **Work model**: Hybrid – in-office 3 days a week at dog-friendly offices in Nolita (NYC) or San Francisco.
- **Perks**: Medical, dental, and vision coverage for you and your family; generous PTO and parental leave; catered lunches and a lunch budget; $1,000+ yearly learning stipend for courses, conferences, and books.
- **Engineering culture**: Build a system that replaces a $20B industry; work on cutting-edge AI, data infrastructure, and compliance systems. Strong emphasis on in-person collaboration.

## Sources
1. [january.com](https://www.january.com/)
2. [january.com/careers](https://www.january.com/careers)
3. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/january)
4. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/januarytechnologies)

## Other roles at January

- [Recovery Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/recovery-specialist-january-remote-hfze09kkasdb)
- [HR Generalist](https://feeny.ai/job/hr-generalist-january-new-york-x42ehzkpemr8) — New York, NY
- [Senior Analytics Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-analytics-engineer-january-new-york-v5n2r944bxn9) — New York, NY
- [Chief of Staff](https://feeny.ai/job/chief-of-staff-january-new-york-y2wx0gemd40x) — New York, NY
- [Senior Product Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-product-manager-january-new-york-qaf84ge03j2v) — New York, NY
- [Mid Market Account Executive](https://feeny.ai/job/mid-market-account-executive-january-new-york-a8dg2c207mnb) — New York, NY
- [Staff Product Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-product-manager-january-new-york-dxbfg5xfzg2t) — New York, NY
- [Head of Security Engineering](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-security-engineering-january-new-york-bt9b8smk08bw) — New York, NY
- [Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/recruiter-january-new-york-r5xdy8432b6w) — New York, NY
- [Strategy & Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/strategy-operations-january-new-york-k3kes36v2aa2) — New York, NY