Founding Data Platform Engineer

Stealth Startup; Greater London; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Stealth Startup in London is hiring a Founding Data Platform Engineer to design and scale a first-principles data platform. You’ll tackle complex data from multiple sources, turning chaos into a reliable, secure foundation.

You’ll work with founders to shape architecture, be hands-on with Python, Airflow, dbt and distributed systems, and build infrastructure enabling autonomous software agents. This is a visa-sponsored, early-stage opportunity with high ownership and impact as the platform

Qualifications

• Experience building production-grade data platforms or infrastructure.
• Strong software engineering and system-design fundamentals.
• High proficiency in Python or another relevant programming language.
• Deep understanding of data pipelines, databases and warehouses.
• Experience reconciling data from multiple, heterogeneous sources.
• Hands-on experience with orchestration and transformation tools such as Airflow, Dagster or dbt.
• Familiarity with columnar data systems such as ClickHouse or DuckDB.
• Experience with distributed systems and third-party integrations.
• A pragmatic mindset and a strong bias towards shipping.
• Bonus: experience with semantic models, ontologies or knowledge graphs.

Responsibilities

• Design and scale the core data platform.
• Connect databases, warehouses and third-party business systems.
• Build reliable ingestion and integration infrastructure.
• Reconcile and unify data from multiple, heterogeneous sources.
• Develop flexible ways to model and interpret unfamiliar data.
• Shape the semantic models and ontologies for consistent meaning.
• Design reliable, observable orchestration for complex data workflows.
• Establish strong foundations for data quality, lineage and observability.
• Embed permissions, governance and security into the platform from the beginning.
• Build infrastructure that autonomous software agents can use reliably.

Skills

Python

Data platforms

Distributed systems

Data pipelines

Databases & warehouses

Tools

Airflow

Dagster

dbt

ClickHouse

DuckDB

Job description

We’re a well-funded, fast-growing data intelligence startup based in London backed by leading venture investors.

The problem

Every growing company eventually reaches the same point: its data is everywhere.

Customer information lives in one system. Revenue data sits in another. Product activity, operations and finance each tell a different part of the story.

Answering a seemingly simple question often means searching through dashboards, writing queries or waiting for someone to bring the numbers together.

We’re building a better way.

We’re building a data intelligence platform for a world in which AI agents, not just people, need to understand and use business information.

Our platform connects fragmented data across an organisation, identifies what is happening in real time and explains the factors driving change. It gives agents the context they need to provide reliable answers and take meaningful action.

Our ambition is to move beyond software that waits for someone to ask a question. We want important insights to surface automatically, reach the right person or agent at the right moment, and initiate the appropriate next step.

We already have growing customers. Their expanding needs are creating increasingly complex technical challenges and an opportunity to define how the next generation of intelligent systems works with enterprise data.

Now we’re looking for someone to help us build the foundation beneath it all.

This is where you come in

We’re looking for an exceptional Founding Data Platform Engineer who has built serious data infrastructure before and wants to do it again, this time with the opportunity to shape the platform from an early stage.

You’ll encounter databases containing hundreds of tables, inconsistent definitions, changing schemas and information spread across tools that were never designed to work together.

Your challenge will be to turn that complexity into a platform that is reliable, secure and simple to build upon.

You won’t be maintaining a finished architecture. You’ll help decide what that architecture becomes.

Working with the founders, you’ll influence our company's technical direction, engineering standards and approach to some of the hardest problems at the intersection of data and AI.

What you’ll build

You’ll help us:

• Design and scale the core data platform
• Connect databases, warehouses and third-party business systems
• Build reliable ingestion and integration infrastructure
• Reconcile and unify data from multiple, heterogeneous sources
• Develop flexible ways to model and interpret unfamiliar data
• Shape the semantic models and ontologies that give business data consistent meaning
• Design reliable, observable orchestration for complex data workflows
• Establish strong foundations for data quality, lineage and observability
• Embed permissions, governance and security into the platform from the beginning
• Build infrastructure that intelligent, autonomous software agents can use reliably

Some problems will require careful, long-term architectural thinking. Others will need a pragmatic solution shipped by the end of the week. Knowing which is which will be an important part of the role.

Who we’re looking for

We’re looking for a Founding Data Platform Engineer with deep experience building complex data systems.

You’ll likely bring:

• Experience building production-grade data platforms or infrastructure
• Strong software engineering and system-design fundamentals
• High proficiency in Python or another relevant programming language
• A deep understanding of data pipelines, databases and warehouses
• Experience reconciling data from multiple, heterogeneous sources
• Hands-on experience with orchestration and transformation tools such as Airflow, Dagster or dbt
• Familiarity with columnar data systems such as ClickHouse or DuckDB
• Experience with distributed systems and third-party integrations
• A pragmatic mindset and a strong bias towards shipping
• Experience with semantic models, ontologies or knowledge graphs would be a bonus.

You don’t need to meet all the requirements. We care more about what you’ve built, how you think and the level of responsibility you’re ready to take on.

The role is based in London but we will be happy to sponsor visa and support relocation if you need it.

Why this role

We’ve already attracted an exciting group of customers. Now we want to exceed their expectations and build the next stage of the platform alongside them and you.

You’ll join a founder-led, fast-paced environment with minimal bureaucracy. You’ll have the freedom, responsibility and support to turn ambitious ideas into working products.

You’ll work closely with customers, see the impact of what you build and have a genuine voice in the direction of both the platform and the company.

If we succeed, the infrastructure you help create won’t simply organise business data. It will become the foundation intelligent software relies on to understand organisations and act on their behalf.