Senior Data Engineer

Job Title

Job Description

About Us

Founded in 2018, headquartered in Johannesburg, and backed by leading investors including Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures and Fidelity's F-Prime Capital, VALR is a global crypto exchange offering a comprehensive suite of products—including Spot Trading, Spot Margin, Perpetual Futures, Staking, Lending, Borrowing, OTC services, VALR Invest, Crypto Bundles, and VALR Pay. Licensed by South Africa's FSCA, with regulatory approval in Europe, VALR serves over 1.7 million registered users and 2,000 corporate and institutional clients worldwide. The exchange is dedicated to advancing a just financial future that upholds human dignity and the unity of mankind.

Our Vision

To establish VALR as a global institution that advances the economic life of human civilisation through a borderless, inclusive, and empowering financial ecosystem.

Our Mission

To contribute towards a global financial system that upholds justice, fosters human dignity, and reflects the oneness of humanity, by serving the financial needs of individuals, communities, and institutions through innovative financial technologies.

Job Responsibilities

Take ownership of VALR's data platform and define the roadmap for how it evolves — across the warehouse layer, ingestion pipelines, orchestration, and data transformation strategy.

Develop, maintain, and optimise scalable ELT pipelines to transform raw data into clean, well-documented, analytics-ready datasets.

Implement data contracts, modeling conventions, and documentation standards that enable consistent, reliable, self-serve access to data across teams.

Build robust data quality checks, pipeline monitoring, and observability tooling — make data reliability visible and measurable.

Work closely with engineering teams to understand data sources, schemas, and event flows across all systems, and ensure high-quality data is captured and correctly structured at the source.

Evaluate and adopt streaming or near-real-time data capabilities where they add meaningful value to the business.

Evaluate tools and technologies in the data stack and recommend improvements with a clear rationale and view on long-term fit.

Qualifications

4–7+ years of experience in Data Engineering or related roles, with demonstrated ownership of production data platforms.

Proven experience taking ownership of and evolving existing data infrastructure, not just building greenfield systems.

Deep proficiency in SQL and data modeling for analytics, including dimensional modeling and dbt.

Strong proficiency in Python for pipeline development, automation, and tooling.

Hands-on experience with cloud-based data platforms at scale (GCP/BigQuery strongly preferred).

Experience designing and owning end-to-end data pipeline architectures, including orchestration (e.g., Airflow) and ELT frameworks.

Solid understanding of data observability and data quality frameworks, and how to build data trust in an organisation.

Familiarity with streaming or event-driven data architectures is a strong advantage.

Strong software engineering fundamentals: version control (Git), CI/CD, infrastructure as code, and code review practices.

Familiarity with or genuine curiosity about ML pipelines, feature engineering, and AI-assisted workflows — you do not need to be an ML engineer, but you should be comfortable operating at that boundary.

Knowledge of data governance, privacy regulations, and secure data handling practices, particularly in a financial services context.

Familiarity with crypto or fintech data structures and business models is a plus.

A tertiary qualification in a technical, analytical, or quantitative field (e.g., Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Statistics) is preferred.

Benefits

Innovative Work Environment

Engage with the latest blockchain technologies and tools in a rapidly evolving industry.

Work from anywhere with secure, stable internet connectivity, allowing you to create your ideal workspace.

Career Development

Benefit from an annual professional development allowance alongside scheduled company training sessions to keep you at the forefront of the crypto industry.

Competitive Compensation

Competitive salaries that align with industry standards.

When you contribute to our success, you'll be rewarded with discretionary bonuses, recognising your impact on VALR's growth.

Receive preferential Tier 5 trading fees on VALR, with no monthly trading volume required.

Diversity and Inclusion

A commitment to fostering a diverse workforce with initiatives that promote equity and belonging.

Wellness

Employees are encouraged to strive for coherent and wholesome lives, fulfilling their work, personal, social, physical and spiritual goals to the best of their abilities.

Compliance with statutory leave required by individual countries, in addition to flexible leave options.

Enjoy lunch on us when working from our Johannesburg Head Office, one of the ways we support wellbeing and connection in the workplace.

Impact and Contribution

At VALR, we believe in a financial system that recognises the oneness of humanity. Our mission is to break down financial barriers and promote universal values of courage, ethical integrity, and the intrinsic worth of every individual.

Engage in initiatives that promote education and awareness about cryptocurrencies, ensuring that everyone has the tools and knowledge to participate in the evolving financial landscape.

Dynamic Team Culture

Open communication and teamwork across departments, fostering innovation and creativity.

Enjoy social gatherings outside of work to strengthen team bonds and boost morale.

Global Exposure

Work with colleagues from around the world.

Exposure to diverse perspectives and practices in the crypto space.

Recognition and Rewards

Regular acknowledgement of employee accomplishments, fostering a culture of appreciation and motivation.

Join us for retreats that blend professional development with team bonding in inspiring locations.

Tools for Success

Receive a Mac laptop and a discretionary allowance to purchase all the extras needed for a productive home office—yours to keep after three years (terms and conditions apply).