Lead Data Engineer

EMS Health; Brussel; Hybrid; EUR 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Company car

Home working allowance

Meal vouchers

Health insurance

12 extra days off (RTT)

Job summary

EMS Health is seeking a Data Engineering Lead in Brussels to shape and deliver healthcare data products. You will combine hands-on technical work with team leadership, aligning development with product priorities and customer commitments.

You will serve as the technical reference for Data Engineering, bridging Product, Operations, and the development team to ensure fast, scalable, high-quality execution.

Qualifications

• Experienced Data Engineer delivering production-grade solutions.
• Ability to lead people while staying hands-on technically.
• Capable of balancing business priorities with technical sustainability.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor the Data Engineering team.
• Translate product priorities into actionable technical work.
• Maintain and refine the Jira backlog.
• Ensure testing, quality and documentation standards.
• Promote DataOps and automated validation.
• Collaborate across Product, Data Science and Engineering teams.

Skills

Data pipeline design

ETL/ELT frameworks

Git, CI/CD, DevOps

API design

Azure cloud

Terminology mapping

Data versioning (DVC)

Workflow orchestration (Airflow/Prefet

Agile/Scrum

Tools

Airflow

Prefect

DVC

Git

Job description

At EarlyTracks, we empower care institutions to manage high-quality medical records with greater efficiency. Our solutions are built on cutting-edge Natural Language Processing (NLP), combining machine learning, terminological resources, and intelligent interfaces to transform unstructured medical data into actionable insights.

About the team

Our Data Engineering team builds the standards-based health data layer connecting hospital systems, clinical applications and new AI-driven use cases. The team develops FHIR repositories, ingestion and transformation pipelines, APIs, interoperability services and data-governance mechanisms. Its work turns fragmented clinical information into structured, interoperable and reusable data. Data Engineering works closely with our Terminology and Data Science teams, combining FHIR, SNOMED CT, NLP and automated data-quality management. The team addresses real-world challenges around provenance, security, reconciliation and federated exchange of health data.

About the job

As a Data Engineering Lead, you will play a key role in shaping and delivering our healthcare data products. You will combine hands-on technical expertise with team leadership responsibilities, ensuring development efforts stay aligned with product priorities, customer commitments, and technical sustainability.

You will serve as the technical reference point for decisions within the Data Engineering domain, and act as the operational bridge between the Product Lead, the Operations Manager, and the development team.

Your mission is to turn ambitious product vision into fast, scalable, high-quality execution, maximizing customer value without compromising technical excellence.

Key Objectives

• Lead and develop the Data Engineering.
• Translate product priorities into actionable technical work.
• Maintain and prioritize the operational backlog in Jira.
• Ensure high standards of software quality, testing, and documentation.
• Balance product roadmap objectives with delivery commitments and technical constraints.
• Drive automation and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Revise workflows to integrate AI and new technologies to reduce development cycles.
• Contribute to the long-term evolution of EMS healthcare data products.

Your responsibilities will be

Technical Leadership

• Lead and mentor a team of Data Engineers (currently one person).
• Define, review, and coordinate the team's work and technical priorities.
• Guide architectural decisions and ensure consistency across developments.
• Review code, mentor developers, and promote engineering best practices.
• Ensure technical debt is identified, documented, and addressed appropriately.
• Act as the primary technical escalation point for the Data Engineering domain.

Product Delivery & Backlog Management

• Maintain and continuously refine the operational backlog in Jira.
• Translate product objectives and functional requirements into prioritized technical tasks.
• Work closely with the Product Lead to ensure roadmap objectives are executable.
• Provide effort estimates and technical feasibility assessments.
• Identify dependencies, risks and capacity constraints.
• Ensure developments are delivered according to agreed priorities and commitments.

Quality & Automation

• Define and implement testing strategies and quality-control mechanisms.
• Establish automated product validation and monitoring processes.
• Build automated reporting and alerting systems.
• Improve traceability, reproducibility and reliability of data processes.
• Promote DataOps practices and continuous improvement.
• Design and implement scalable data pipelines and processing workflows.
• Develop algorithms supporting terminology mapping, data normalization and quality assessment.
• Automate terminology ingestion and integration processes.
• Collaborate with Product, Data Science and Engineering teams to deploy production-ready solutions.
• Contribute to the continuous evolution of the Termino platform and related products.

Team & Cross-functional Collaboration

• Support the professional growth and development of team members.
• Foster a culture of ownership, collaboration and continuous learning.
• Participate in capacity planning and delivery planning activities.
• Collaborate closely with Product, Operations, Data Science and commercial stakeholders.
• Provide regular visibility on progress, risks and resource needs.

What Success Looks Like

During your first year, you will:

• Successfully lead and develop the Data Engineering team.
• Establish a clear and maintainable Jira backlog.
• Improve visibility and predictability of delivery.
• Implement automated testing and reporting mechanisms.
• Reduce technical debt and improve platform reliability.
• Participate to strengthen governance around Terminology and related products.
• Ensure alignment between product vision, delivery commitments, and technical execution.

Who you are

• An experienced Data Engineer with a proven track record of delivering production-grade solutions.
• Comfortable leading people while remaining hands-on technically.
• Able to balance business priorities, customer commitments, and technical sustainability.
• Structured and pragmatic in decision-making.
• Strong communicator capable of aligning technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Passionate about building high-quality healthcare technology solutions.

Tech skills you have:

Note: If you believe you have the skills and mindset to succeed in this role, even if you don’t meet every single requirement, we encourage you to apply and tell us why your experience is relevant.

• Data pipeline architecture and implementation.
• ETL/ELT frameworks and data integration workflows.
• Testing frameworks and software quality practices.
• Git, CI/CD and DevOps principles.
• API design and integration.
• Azure cloud technologies.
• Medical terminologies and terminology mapping.
• Data versioning (DVC).
• Workflow orchestration tools (Airflow, Prefect).
• Agile/Scrum environments.

What’s in it for you

• Work with state-of-the-art technologies in a fast-evolving field.
• Join a mission-driven company focused on improving the quality of medical records.
• Be part of a fast-growing team with a strong technological vision.
• Enjoy a vibrant work environment in Brussels ( EU district - Merode Metro Station)
• Benefit from flexible working conditions (hours and location).
• Receive a competitive salary with attractive benefits: company car, home working allowance, meal vouchers, health insurance, and 12 extra days off (“réduction du temps de travail”).