Lead Data Platform Engineer

Accountabilities:

• Own and evolve the full data platform lifecycle, including ingestion, streaming, batch processing, data modeling, aggregation, and reporting pipelines.
• Define and execute the technical roadmap post-migration, focusing on stability, scalability, cost efficiency, and operational excellence.
• Strengthen observability, monitoring, alerting, and incident management for business-critical data workflows.
• Establish engineering standards for code quality, testing, documentation, and secure AI-assisted development practices.
• Drive improvements in data quality controls, validation frameworks, and operational safeguards across the platform.
• Lead architectural decisions and technical direction while remaining hands-on with core system development.
• Collaborate with Product, Customer Success, and leadership to translate business needs into scalable technical solutions.
• Guide external contributors and ensure sustainable internal ownership of all critical platform components.

Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience in Data Engineering, Data Platform Engineering, or Platform Engineering in production environments.
• Strong proficiency in Go (Golang), used in backend systems such as ingestion services, Pub/Sub processors, Dataflow jobs, and tooling.
• Hands-on experience with GCP services including Pub/Sub, BigQuery, Cloud Run, Dataflow, Cloud Storage, and Cloud SQL.
• Strong SQL expertise and solid data modeling capabilities; experience with SQLMesh or similar tools is a plus.
• Experience with Terraform, CI/CD pipelines, and containerized, serverless-first architectures (Cloud Run preferred).
• Familiarity with Protobuf or other schema definition/serialization frameworks.
• Experience with AI coding assistants and strong judgment in reviewing AI-generated code for quality and risk.
• Exposure to or interest in digital audience measurement, web analytics, or related data-heavy domains is highly valued.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to align technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Fluent German (C1) required and good English for documentation and cross-team collaboration.

Benefits:

• 100% remote-first setup with full flexibility in working location and hours
• High autonomy and ownership culture with minimal bureaucracy and fast decision-making
• Opportunity to shape and evolve a mission-critical, large-scale data platform post-migration
• Strong engineering culture with focus on quality, scalability, and continuous improvement
• Collaborative, low-ego team environment with open knowledge sharing
• Access to a broader SaaS ecosystem and internal expert community for learning and exchange
• Meaningful technical impact on a system used across major European media stakeholders
• Long-term product and platform ownership rather than short-term project delivery