Data Engineer

Soil Capital Ltd; Louvain-la-Neuve; Hybrid; EUR 58,000 - 65,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Mission-driven career

Flexible holiday policy

Health insurance with Alan

Commuter support

Flexible remote work (up to 2 days per

Excellent office in Louvain-la-Neuve

Salary: Gross EUR 58-65k

Job summary

Soil Capital is seeking a Data Engineer to build scalable data foundations, enabling client-ready insights. You will own data pipelines, lakehouse design, and governance, collaborating with BI, product, and data science teams to speed up insights and ensure data quality.

You will work from our Belgium base with options for hybrid remote work between offices in Louvain-la-Neuve, London, and Paris, contributing to a regenerative agriculture mission.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of data engineering experience building data platforms
• Deep hands-on lakehouse architecture experience, Spark/PySpark or Databricks
• Fluency in Python and SQL with dimensional/medallion modeling
• Experience architecting ingestion patterns for complex external datasets
• CI/CD, data governance, quality, and lifecycle management
• Familiarity with Power BI to support reporting layer
• Experience with AI-assisted development tools (Claude Copilot) is a plus

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain pipelines and ingestion patterns into the datalake
• Define conventions and shared datasets for consistent data science work
• Turn one-off outputs into reusable data products
• Provide a clean, well-modeled data layer for BI and products
• Set up AI-centered solutions to improve data accessibility
• Maintain data lineage and QA processes across pipelines

Skills

Data engineering

Lakehouse

Python

SQL

Geospatial data

CI/CD

Power BI

AI tools

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related

Tools

Microsoft Fabric

Spark PySpark

Databricks

Synapse

Power BI

Job description

Soil Capital is on a mission to regenerate over 10 million hectares of land by 2030, addressing our environmental and food security challenges through regenerative and low‑carbon agriculture. As a leading expert in this field, we have developed the first payment for ecosystem services program for farmers in Europe.

Through our certified programme and our platform, Soil Capital leads the food and ag sector transformation by engaging with blue chip organisations who seek to deliver on their environmental commitments and build supply chain resilience. These business purchase regenerative units, acting as an incentive for farmers to measure and earning improve their agricultural practices.

Our technology supports farmers by allowing them to efficiently and accurately measure farming practices, as well as the GHG balance of their farm which we then audit and certify to generate certificates. This helps farmers understand the levers to accelerate their adoption of regenerative practices.

In the past ten years, Soil Capital has established as a thought leader and a driver of change at scale in France, Belgium, the U.K, Ireland, Poland and Argentina. Pursuing its ambitious growth trajectory, it is now expanding geographical and product scopes.

About the role

Data forms the beating heart of the Soil Capital value proposition, therefore this role has an important contribution to make to the future of how Soil Capital does business. We are not just moving standard business metrics; our data sets model the physical world, capturing complex agro‑environmental footprints and geospatial realities. Our data team turns this primary data into the insights, models, and metrics that drive the agricultural transition.

Our data scientists pioneer that discovery: combining our data with open and external sources, and applying modelling and science to answer stakeholder questions. Our next step is to build on that discovery — taking that work and making it reliable, reusable and ready for clients.

That is the gap this role fills. We are looking for a Data Engineer to build and own the data foundations — curated datasets, serving layers, QA pipelines and conventions — so that data‑science outputs come out client‑ready by construction and get reused, instead of being re‑plumbed by hand for every new insight. This lets us move and iterate faster on promising new ideas. The role is supported by the Tech team for infrastructure, product and BI analysis teams for client‑facing reporting, and data science for content.

The defining measure of success is how often a foundation gets reused rather than rebuilt, and how fast a data‑science idea becomes something a client can test. You will be the person who paves the road from raw data to stakeholders, keeps it paved, and scales it.

Your Mandate

The Data engineer we are looking for makes sure our datalake is scaled and organised correctly to serve our business units on two fronts:

Accelerate data discoveries

• Build and maintain the pipelines and ingestion patterns that bring new data sources — including complex, unfamiliar, external ones — into our datalake.
• Set the conventions, structure and shared datasets that allows the data science team move fast and consistently, building on a common base across different projects.
• Turn one‑off data‑science outputs into documented, reusable data products that outlast the project that created them.

Quicker insights to stakeholders: faster and more reliable reporting and data consumption

• Provide a clean, well‑modelled data layer that the BI analyst and product team can build semantic models and reporting on, without coming back to you for every change.
• Set up the AI‑centered solutions that make our data more accessible and useful to internal stakeholders.
• Maintain baseline documentation and lineage so data is easy to find, understand and trust across the business.
• Maintain and deploy QA processes that keep the data reliable and the pipelines green.

What we’re looking for

Experience & expertise

• Architectural Track Record: 5+ years of data engineering experience, with a proven history of evolving data platforms from bespoke, per‑project plumbing toward reusable, productised foundations.
• Lakehouse Ownership: Deep, hands‑on expertise in architecting and scaling modern lakehouse platforms. Microsoft Fabric and Spark (PySpark, SparkSQL) are strongly preferred, though equivalent experience (Databricks, Synapse) is welcome.
• Advanced Data Modelling: Fluency in Python and SQL, paired with the architectural instincts to design robust dimensional and Medallion architectures from scratch.
• Systemic Integration: Proven ability to architect ingestion patterns for complex, unfamiliar external datasets—ideally including geospatial or remote‑sensing data—ensuring seamless integration into the core platform.
• Engineering Excellence: Concrete experience setting the standard for CI/CD, deployment pipelines, and data governance (access, cataloguing, quality, and lifecycle), balancing platform performance, maintainability, and cost‑awareness.
• Cross‑Functional Enablement: Sufficient familiarity with Power BI to effectively support and unblock the reporting layer owned by business analysts and the product team.
• Forward‑Looking Development: Hands‑on experience experimenting with AI‑assisted development tools (Claude Code, Copilot, Cursor), with a critical, thoughtful perspective on where they accelerate workflows and where they fall short.

Mindset

• Consumer‑focused: You measure your work by whether it reaches clients faster and gets reused, not by how elegant the platform is on its own.
• Pragmatically driven: You know when something is worth abstracting into a reusable product and when it is premature. You value shipping impactful work over intellectual vanity, knowing exactly when to polish and when to ship.
• Candid and constructive: Honest about trade‑offs and able to articulate them — to data scientists, to product, and to less experienced colleagues — clearly and constructively.
• Curious: You engage critically with AI tools and new frameworks without ignoring or over‑trusting them, actively experimenting to continuously modernise your workflow.
• A low‑ego collaborator: The team is highly constructive and debate‑friendly; we want to keep it that way. You are happy to debate platform architecture in the morning, and jump in to help unblock a colleague in the afternoon.
• Mission‑aligned: Genuine interest in agriculture, climate, or carbon markets.

Nice to have

• Experience with orchestration and workflow automation (n8n, Airflow, or similar) and with dbt or equivalent transformation tooling.

Languages

• English — working proficiency. The technical and business language used throughout Soil Capital.

What we offer

At Soil Capital, we are committed to building a sustainable and regenerative food system, with farmers at the heart of this mission. By joining us, you will grow your career in a mission‑driven company, surrounded by passionate colleagues.

• A mission‑driven career: join a company on a mission to transform the farming and food sectors, with a team driven by and committed to that mission.
• Flexible holiday policy: take the holidays you need, while coordinating with your team and respecting the demands of your role.
• Health insurance: comprehensive coverage with Alan, for you and your family.
• Commuter support: Public transport reimbursement if you come to the office by public transport.
• Flexible remote work: work remotely up to 2 days per week, provided you coordinate with your colleagues.
• Great workspaces: An excellent office in Louvain‑la‑Neuve, Belgium (or possibly our London or Paris offices), with hybrid working.
• Connected culture: join quarterly company events and visit our offices in Paris and London to build genuine ties with the wider team.
• Compensation: Gross salary in the range of EUR 58 to 65k, depending on your type of employment and experience.

Our hiring process

1. First interview with Charlotte, People Specialist (30 minutes).
2. Hiring‑lead interview with Jelle, Data Team Lead, for a deep‑dive discussion (45 minutes).
3. Technical case interview with the data team and a stakeholder from product or tech.
4. Final call with Guillaume, COO (30 minutes).

Equal opportunity

Soil Capital is an equal opportunity employer. We encourage applications from all candidates who meet the job requirements, regardless of their race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, or disability.