Technical Support Engineer (L1/Frontline Support)

Databento; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Databento is a market data platform transforming financial data access. We seek a technically adept support professional who handles API issues, onboarding, and billing queries. You will document solutions and contribute tutorials, with a close collaboration with engineering to escalate complex issues.

You will also help grow our developer communities and write technical guides to improve developer experience. Prior startup or QA exposure is a plus, and Python proficiency is essential.

Qualifications

• At least 2 years in technical support, QA, or engineering.
• Proficiency in Python.
• Experience with API onboarding, authentication, or billing is a plus.
• Strong written and verbal technical communication.
• Familiarity with developer communities (Discord, Reddit) is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the first point of contact for customer support inquiries about API usage, onboarding, authentication, and billing.
• Escalate complex issues to L2/L3 support or engineering with reproduction steps and logs.
• Identify recurring questions and contribute to docs, FAQs, and onboarding content.
• Write tutorials and how-to guides to help developers use our APIs.
• Moderate and grow online developer communities (Slack, Reddit) and surface feedback.

Skills

Python

Technical communication

Customer support

Troubleshooting

Startup experience

Tools

Wireshark

tcpdump

curl

jq

SQL

Grafana

Prometheus

Sentry

strace

Job description

Job Description

Job Description The financial industry is growing at a record pace, but our data providers are still stuck in the past — with cumbersome onboarding processes, complicated APIs, slow infrastructure, and expensive licensing costs.

Databento is the market data platform for modern finance. The company provides real-time and historical data across futures, options, and equities through a unified API. By owning the entire market data stack end‑to‑end, Databento is the first platform of its kind to combine the performance and reliability demanded by the world's leading trading firms with a dramatically simpler developer experience. Our team includes alumni of Two Sigma, Citadel Securities, Flow Traders, Tower Research, PDT Partners, SIG, and other top quantitative firms.

This role sits squarely at L1 : you'll be the first point of contact for customer issues, responsible for understanding the problem, resolving common and well‑documented cases, and escalating more complex issues to senior support or engineering with clear reproduction steps and context.

Responsibilities

• Act as the first point of contact for customer support inquiries, resolving common customer issues related to API usage, onboarding, authentication, integration, and billing.
• Escalate issues to L2/L3 support or engineering while maintaining accurate ticket status, reproduction steps, and logs.
• Identify recurring questions and contribute improvements to documentation, FAQs, and onboarding materials.
• Write technical content on occasion, including tutorials, how‑to guides, and blog posts that help developers get the most out of our APIs.
• Help manage and grow our online developer communities (Slack, Reddit, etc.) by answering questions and surfacing feedback.

What we typically look for

• Prior experience with Databento's API is strongly preferred, as well as familiarity with financial trading and/or market data.
• At least 2 years of experience in technical support, QA, or engineering.
• Working proficiency in Python.
• Experience with troubleshooting tools (Wireshark, tcpdump, ss, nc, telnet, strace, gdb, perf, eBPF, lsof, curl, xxd, jq, SQL) is a plus.
• Experience with observability tools (Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, Sentry) is a plus.
• Strong technical communication skills. DevRel experience (e.g. managing Discord communities, creating technical blog posts, podcasts, videos, etc) is a plus.
• Experience at an early‑stage startup is a plus.

Databento, Inc. provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements, we comply with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in every location where we operate. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training. Pursuant to applicable laws, we consider qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records. If you need an accommodation, please let us know.

Our recruiting data suggests that underrepresented applicants often downplay their skills. Even if your experience doesn't exactly match the qualifications listed, we still want to hear from you.