Manager, Data Engineering Ghent, Belgium

The Hotels Network; Oost-Vlaanderen; Hybrid; EUR 90,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible time off

Career development

Impactful work

Mobility budget or company car

Net allowance for home office

Job summary

Lighthouse in Belgium seeks an experienced Data Engineering Manager to lead an engineering team owning end-to-end data domains within a large-scale ingestion and transformation engine. You will unify global hospitality data into high-fidelity semantic layers powering insights for hotels worldwide.

You will combine hands-on data engineering expertise with people leadership, driving data pipelines, AI-enabled platforms, and collaboration across product and business teams to deliver impact at scale.

Qualifications

• Proven people leadership in engineering
• Hands-on data engineering with ETL/ELT, batch and streaming pipelines
• Proactive, solution-oriented mindset
• Ability to plan and estimate large architectural projects
• Interest/experience with AI/LLMs or AI-assisted coding tools
• Strong data architecture optimization and process improvements
• Professional Python for large-scale data processing

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor a data engineering team
• Own end-to-end data ingestion and transformation domains
• Architect, implement, and scale streaming and batch pipelines
• Embed an AI-first development culture within the team
• Improve data quality, observability, and pipeline reliability
• Collaborate with product, engineering, support and business teams

Skills

People leadership

Data engineering

ETL/ELT

Batch pipelines

Streaming pipelines

Data modelling

Python

Data cloud tech

Kafka

Pub/Sub

English

Stakeholder management

Tools

BigQuery

Spanner

Snowflake

Databricks

Job description

At Lighthouse, we’re on a mission to revolutionize commercial strategy as hospitality’s most powerful AI platform. We take the world's largest hotel data network and transform it into real-time intelligence that drives action. We don't just deliver insights; we empower businesses to make decisions that move revenue.

With $370M in Series C funding and over $100M in ARR, we are scaling at lightspeed. Our 850+ teammates across 35 countries aren't just building software—they are leveraging cutting-edge AI to help hoteliers be the first to act. Tens of thousands of hotels across 185 countries trust Lighthouse to execute their commercial strategy, including every one of the top 15 global chains and thousands of independent hotels that consistently outperform their markets. With Lighthouse AI, the intelligence gets deeper. Decisions get smarter. Actions get faster. We help hoteliers be first to act.

Lighthouse Values: Our guiding light

We are Lumineers . Our shared values keep us on a collaborative path fostering a cultural and customer centric environment

• Pursuit of greatness : We’re innovators who care deeply about our customers’ success. Our team brings their best work, stays curious, and delivers excellence through attention to detail
• Meaningful work matters : We make every moment count by knowing what to deliver, why it matters, and how it drives Lighthouse forward
• Elevate each other : We don’t just work together - we grow together. What unites us is understanding each other as people and working toward shared goals

We’re more than just a workplace – we’re a community. Collaborative, fun, and deeply committed, we work hard together to revolutionize the hospitality sector. Are you ready to join us and shine brighter in the industry’s most exciting rocket-ship?

What you will do

As a Data Engineering Manager, you will lead an engineering team that owns end-to-end a set of data domains within our large-scale ingestion and transformation engine, unifying the world's hospitality data into a strategic high-fidelity semantic layer. Your team builds and maintains complex data pipelines handling large data streams. This is a high-impact role where you will see your team's work directly translate into real-world applications that impact hotels worldwide. The role requires you to combine strong technical experience with operational and people management excellence.

Where you will have impact

• Lead, coach, and mentor a team of data engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and long-term career growth.
• Be the technical guide the team can lean on for growing their technical careers and for collaborating on their technical work, while at the same time being strong with people, organization, structure, planning and driving delivery.
• Drive the architecture, design, implementation, maintenance, improvements and scaling of the streaming and batch data pipelines that ingest and transform the massive volume of data powering our products.
• You are at the forefront of AI evolution, helping to embed intelligence into our organization, way of working and platform. You'll champion an AI-first development culture within the engineering team.
• Identify, estimate, plan and deliver continuous improvements with the team in data quality, system stability, observability, data pipeline performance, latency, and reliability.
• Collaborate closely with product, other engineering teams, support and business teams.

About our team

You’ll be leading a skilled team of data engineers who own a number of data domains and integration types that feed our platform. You are responsible end-to-end for the ingestion and complex transformations for these domains, that turn massive streams of structured and less structured data into data products with actionable insights for the hospitality industry.

What's in it for you?

• Flexible time off: Autonomy to manage your work-life balance.
• Career development: Workshops, frameworks, and trainings to maximize your professional potential.
• Impactful work: Shape products relied on 85,000+ users worldwide.
• Mobility options: Mobility budget or company car (based on your job category).
• Net allowance: Support for home office related expenses.
• Comprehensive health insurance: Extensive coverage for you and your dependents.
• Pension funding: Group insurance to secure your future.
• Referral bonuses: Earn rewards for bringing in new talent.

Who you are

• You are an experienced people leader with a track record of managing engineering teams, with a passion for coaching and mentoring engineers and driving their technical and professional growth.
• You come from a strong hands-on background in data engineering, with deep experience in ETL/ELT, batch and streaming pipelines, complex data transformations, and data modelling.
• You have a proactive, "can-do" attitude, viewing challenges as opportunities and inspiring a positive, solution-oriented mindset within your team.
• You excel at seeing the bigger picture, breaking down large architectural projects into clear, manageable tasks, and accurately estimating effort.
• You are a forward-thinking builder who views AI as a core component of modern architecture. You have a proven interest (or experience) in working with LLMs, agentic workflows, or AI-assisted coding tools to ship higher-quality code, faster.
• You get energized from optimizing technical architectures, structure, tooling, support and other processes.
• Professional proficiency in Python for large-scale data processing and pipeline development.
• Strong knowledge of data cloud technologies, data streaming systems (like Google Cloud Pub/Sub or Kafka), and cloud database solutions (like BigQuery, Spanner, Snowflake, or Databricks).
• Fluency in English, with excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.

We welcome

• Experience building integrations with third-party APIs and external data sources.
• Experience within the hospitality technology sector or similar industries (e.g. airline industry).

Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging

Thank you for considering a career with Lighthouse. We are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace that values equal opportunity for all. We welcome candidates from all backgrounds, regardless of age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, and disability. Our commitment to equality is part of our culture. If you require reasonable accommodation at any point during the application or interview process, please notify your recruiter.

Not ticking every box? No problem! We value diverse backgrounds and unique skill sets, and we encourage individuals from all walks of life to apply. If your experience looks a little different from what we've described, but you're passionate about what we do and are a quick learner, we'd love to hear from you!