Data Platform Engineer

What you will do:

Reliability, Standards & Governance

• Own and improve monitoring, alerting, and observability across the data platform, so failures are caught early and pipeline/model health is visible to teams.
• Contribute to architecture discussions: propose improvements, document trade-offs (ADRs, RFCs), and help decide what to build, refactor, or retire.
• Set, document, and enforce engineering standards and best practices across our lakehouse, orchestration layer, data warehouse, and reporting systems, including code review culture.

Enablement & Internal Tooling

• Write clear guides, standards, and documentation that help colleagues across the Data domain work more efficiently and consistently, driving alignment through knowledge-sharing forums.
• Build and maintain internal tooling that removes friction for the teams you serve (e.g. AI-augmented workflows, extending observability and quality frameworks).
• Support AI adoption within our data infrastructure, in collaboration with the broader tech division.

Hands-On Pipeline & model development

• Enhance and build on our Redshift data warehouse using dbt and Paradime .
• Orchestrate execution and dependencies between up/downstream pipelines ( MWAA , Paradime ), provisioning infrastructure via IaC (Pulumi, Terraform) so changes stay reproducible and version-controlled.
• Contribute to our ingestion pipelines across three core patterns - simple ELT, containerised Python, and event-based - landing data reliably into our medallion lakehouse ( S3, Glue, Iceberg ).

Who we're looking for:

• 3+ years in a data platform, data engineering, analytics engineering, DataOps, or closely related role in a production environment.
• Breadth over depth in a single tool - comfortable switching between topics, picking up unfamiliar problems, with a wide base of technical knowledge across the data stack.
• Strong SQL and Python skills, with a real understanding of how databases work (query execution, performance tuning, storage, access and permission models) and enough dbt experience to review others' work and set standards.
• Working knowledge of the AWS data stack (Redshift, S3, IAM, Athena, Glue) or equivalent, plus experience with lakehouse architectures ( Apache Iceberg, Delta, etc ), pipeline orchestration ( Apache Airflow or equivalent), and modern ingestion/ELT tooling ( Airbyte, Fivetran , or equivalent).
• Exposure to Infrastructure as Code (Pulumi, Terraform, or equivalent) , and confidence navigating internal tooling and existing codebases.
• Strong communication and writing. You can move between a stakeholder conversation about a problem and a technical discussion about how to solve it.
• Comfortable writing documentation, guides, and architecture decisions.
• Initiative and autonomy to drive work forward independently after onboarding, raising blockers early.
• Fluent English, written and spoken; based in Europe with workable timezone overlap.

What we offer:

• Maturing Scale-Up : We’re part of the 13–20% of start-ups that transition to scale-up. This is a rare stage where we refine systems without losing agility. It’s where start-up energy meets scalable impact - and where people can build the next version of Emma.
• Empowerment to Impact : Every Emmie owns part of our success with accountability. It’s about seeing it, owning it, doing it – something that is valued and measured in development.
• Growth & Learning Journey : We live by the 70/20/10 model – with 70% on the job, 20% from others, 10% structured training. We invest in your growth with trainings and coaching to get you to the top of your game.
• Emma-zing Community : We hire selectively which means working with smart, collaborative people who care deeply. It’s a community built by Emmies for Emmies.
• Next Level Global : With 60+ nationalities across 4 offices, global collaboration is part of our values. You’ll work across cultures, perspectives, and time zones.
• Flexibility : Our Technology team's remote work policy allows for great flexibility. (Please note that the role requires being based in Portugal or Germany)