Senior Data Engineer – All Genders

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Germany.

📋 Description

• Design, develop, and sustain our streaming and CDC infrastructure (Apache Kafka, Debezium, Schema Registry, BigQuery sinks) along with our proprietary workflow management platform Navarch, which operates on Kubernetes.

• Spearhead architectural projects across the platform from initial concept through to production, encompassing streaming, orchestration, the data warehouse, and the overarching observability layer.

• Manage and enhance our BigQuery multi-project configuration, establishing access management, partitioning strategies, slot allocation, and cost-effective design patterns.

• Determine how the platform assists domain analysts in creating their own pipelines — establishing clear ownership boundaries, quality assurance measures, and minimizing hand-off friction between producers and the platform team.

• Develop and uphold observability throughout the data platform (including Datadog, Slack-native alerts, and cost dashboards) while also overseeing our CI/CD pipelines on our self-hosted GitLab instance.

• Oversee BigQuery and Kafka expenditures at a platform level — applying FinOps principles.

• Offer senior-level contributions to architectural decisions across the platform — including design reviews, merge-request evaluations, and multi-quarter team initiatives.

⛳️ Requirements

• Several years of senior data engineering experience, showcased by independent ownership of production systems — including on-call responsibilities, delivering cross-component changes, and influencing architecture without extensive procedural frameworks.

• Strong analytical skills with a proven track record of troubleshooting complex, cross-component challenges (such as schema evolution, broker lag, query performance, and cost discrepancies).

• Professional software engineering experience with Python and a solid understanding of SQL in cloud data warehouses — encompassing partitioning, clustering, query costs, and idempotency.

• Extensive experience with object-oriented programming and software design patterns, applied to data engineering scenarios.

• Practical experience with at least four of the following technologies:

• Message brokers, ideally Apache Kafka (including broker operations, Schema Registry, KRaft).

• Change Data Capture, ideally Debezium.

• Orchestration tools (in-house, Airflow, Dagster, or similar).

• Public cloud providers, ideally Google Cloud Platform.

• Container orchestration, ideally Kubernetes (including Helm, operators, KEDA/VPA).

• Infrastructure as Code, ideally Terraform and/or Ansible.

• Data modeling and transformation, ideally using dbt or similar tools.

• Ability to articulate trade-offs made in previous decisions — such as batch vs. stream, build vs. buy, latency vs. cost, isolation vs. coupling — supported by concrete metrics from your prior work.

• Flourish in a Kanban-style, low-process setting where senior engineers manage their own workload and rotate triage weekly.

• Fluent in English (C1) and enjoy collaborating in a dynamic, international context.

🏝️ Benefits

• Create your own work–life balance: Choose between remote work (within Germany) or working from one of our locations in Cologne, Darmstadt, Düsseldorf, or Berlin.

• Relocation support: We provide an appealing relocation package for candidates moving to Germany.

• Fitness benefits: Discounts for Urban Sports Club and RSG Group fitness studios for activities like swimming, yoga, and more.

• Mental well-being: Access to resources like Instahelp, a digital platform offering online psychological counseling.

• Vacation & sabbatical: 30 vacation days per year and the option to take a sabbatical after a qualifying period with the company.

• Pluxee restaurant vouchers: Option to purchase Pluxee vouchers through us and benefit from tax-advantaged meal allowances.

• Deutschlandticket subsidy: We subsidize your public transport season ticket for enhanced mobility.

• Employee discount: Monthly coupon for Kaufland.de.

• Choice of operating system: Choose between MacOS or Ubuntu Linux.

• Professional development: Online language programs, diverse in-house training, automated 360-degree feedback, and funding for relevant conferences, training, and approved team workshops to support growth.