Data Engineer

Reality Defender is an award-winning cybersecurity company helping enterprises and governments detect deepfakes and AI-generated media. Utilizing a patented multi-model approach, Reality Defender is robust against the bleeding edge of generative platforms producing video, audio, imagery, and text media. Reality Defender's API-first deepfake detection platform empowers teams and developers alike to identify fraud, disinformation campaigns, and harmful deepfakes in real time.

Backed by world class investors including DCVC, Illuminate Financial, Y Combinator, Booz Allen Hamilton, IBM, Accenture, Rackhouse, and Argon VC, Reality Defender works with leading enterprise clients, financial institutions, and governments in order to ensure AI-generated media is not used for malicious purposes.

Youtube: Reality Defender Wins RSA Most Innovative Startup

We're looking for a Data Engineer who can build and scale the infrastructure powering our data platform, with a strong foundation in distributed systems and cloud-native tooling. You'll design and operate the pipelines that move, process, and prepare multi-terabyte and streaming datasets — including audio and video — for Reality Defender's detection models, and you'll work closely with ML engineers and researchers to keep that data flowing reliably at scale. Responsibilities include:

• Design, build, and operate large-scale data processing pipelines handling multi-terabyte and streaming datasets, including audio/video transcoding, feature extraction, and preprocessing workflows.

• Deploy, scale, and troubleshoot containerized workloads on Kubernetes and AWS in production environments.

• Build and maintain distributed data processing jobs using frameworks such as Spark and Ray.

• Design and operate workflow orchestration systems (e.g., Airflow) with dependency management, retries, monitoring, and alerting for production pipelines.

• Administer and tune enterprise databases, including performance tuning, backup/recovery, access control, and scaling strategies.

• Partner with ML engineers and researchers to support training pipelines, model retraining triggers, feature stores, and other MLOps workflows.

• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes and AWS, including deploying, scaling, and troubleshooting containerized workloads in production environments.

• Proficiency with high-performance/distributed computing frameworks such as Spark and Ray for processing large-scale datasets.

• Experience with workflow orchestration tools such as Airflow (or comparable systems like Dagster, Prefect, or Luigi) to schedule and manage complex data pipelines.

• Strong programming skills in Python and SQL; experience with Golang is a plus.

• Demonstrated track record building and operating large-scale data processing pipelines, ideally handling multi-terabyte or streaming datasets.

• Experience working with audio or video data at scale is a strong plus (e.g., transcoding, feature extraction, or preprocessing pipelines).

• Familiarity with common data transformation patterns applied to large datasets (ETL/ELT, batch and stream processing, data validation and quality checks).

• Experience designing and maintaining job orchestration systems, including dependency management, retries, monitoring, and alerting for production pipelines.

• Bonus: experience orchestrating machine learning workflows (training pipelines, model retraining triggers, feature stores, or MLOps tooling).

Reality Defender offers the following benefits to all our employees, regardless of location:

• Healthcare plans with 100% premium coverage for employees and partial coverage available for dependents

• Dental and Vision plans with 100% premium coverage for employees and their dependents

• Short/Long-term disability and life insurance plans with 100% premium coverage for employees

• FSA/HSA and 401k programs

• Equity compensation

• 20 days of PTO per year

• 12 weeks of Parental Leave

• Learning and Development budget

• Monthly wellness benefits

• Annual company-sponsored offsite

For employees working from Reality Defender’s HQ in NYC, we offer the following benefits:

• Daily in-office lunch through UberEats

• Commuter benefits

• Remote Fridays

• Happy Hours and other local events