Senior Data Engineer

We are looking for a Senior Data Engineer with a Platform focus to take a leading role in the architecture and evolution of our internal Data Platform. You'll operate as a domain expert — designing scalable open-source platform infrastructure, defining standards adopted across the team, and mentoring engineers around you.

This is a senior individual contributor role with real technical influence: you'll produce Architecture Decision Records, drive reliability initiatives, and shape the platform roadmap. At the same time, you'll stay close to the data engineering craft — contributing to data pipeline design, governance standards, data quality practices, and the broader data infrastructure that analysts and scientists depend on every day.

This is a fully in-office role based in Kraków

Responsibilities

Platform Architecture & Infrastructure

• Design scalable, resilient platform architectures using open-source technologies

• Define IaC, Kubernetes, and Docker standards adopted across the platform team

• Architect and deliver platform microservices with well-defined interfaces

• Lead evaluation and adoption of open-source query engines and table formats

• Define strategies for compute and storage

• Design observability frameworks: metrics, tracing, and logging standards

Data Engineering & Governance

• Contribute to the design and implementation of data lakes, data warehouses, and ETL/ELT pipelines

• Develop and maintain standards for data modelling

• Implement standards for optimizing data pipelines to ensure seamless data flow and processing

• Define and uphold data quality and governance standards

• Create standards for integrating and processing data from multiple sources, ensuring consistency and accuracy

• Collaborate with the Data Team and with the cross-functional teams. Work effectively within a diverse, international team spread across Switzerland, Poland, Serbia, and China.

Leadership & Mentorship

• Mentor junior and intermediate platform engineers, contributing to their technical growth

• Conduct code and architecture reviews

• Influence the platform roadmap with technically grounded proposals

• Resolve technical conflicts constructively and facilitate cross-team collaboration

Requirements

• A university degree, at least Masters in Computer Science or a related science, technology or engineering field.

• 5+ years of relevant experience in data engineering or data platform engineering roles

• Deep Kubernetes knowledge: cluster operations, networking, storage, security

• Expert-level Docker: security hardening, image optimization

• Deep expertise in open-source query engine internals — query planning, cost-based optimization, connector development

• Expert knowledge of open file formats — internals, trade-offs, and operational characteristics

• Advanced microservice design: API contracts, service mesh, circuit breaking

• Expert knowledge of observability: distributed tracing, metrics pipelines, SLO frameworks

• Expert-level in Python and SQL

• Proficiency in RDBMS

• Experience with data orchestration tools

• Expertise in data partitioning, incremental scalability, data quality, and governance

• Strong teamwork and communication skills

• Ability to work independently and manage your time effectively

• Comfortable working in a diverse, international environment

Good to Have

• Experience in academia

• PhD in a relevant field

• Experience in C++ / Rust

• Advanced CI/CD

• Advanced IaC expertise

• Understanding of document and graph databases

Why Join Us?

• Be part of a dynamic and innovative team at the forefront of data technology

• Opportunity to shape a team, driving impactful projects

• Work in a collaborative environment that values creativity and diversity

• Competitive salary

• Private medical care (fully covered)

• MultiSport card (partially covered)

• Team building activities

If you are interested in this position, we look forward to receiving your complete application. Please submit your CV in English. We look forward to welcoming you to our team in Krakow.

About MDPI

Headquartered in Switzerland, MDPI is a fully Open Access publisher with a portfolio of more than 500 journals across all scientific disciplines. To date, MDPI has published the works of over 4.5 million researchers, collaborating with an extensive network of academic institutions and scientific societies worldwide. Above all, MDPI is committed to ensuring that high-quality research is freely accessible to readers across the globe.

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