Senior Data Engineer
Sparta is revolutionizing the commodity trading industry with a B2B SaaS that does away with the Excel spreadsheets that traders have been working with for decades.
They are currently in a growth phase. Are you a data and development lover?, and Would you like to learn more about them? Read on :)
¿Qué harás?
Let's take a look back to see how they arrived at this point... Come with me ;)
The journey began in 2019 when Felipe (CEO) and Miles (COO) decided to leave the world of oil trading behind them, having worked in this field for more than 35 years. They had realized that the wave of digitalization and new technologies had not yet reached the commodities trading market. Joined by Luis (CTO), they took the plunge and decided to set up Sparta, with the focus on automating, optimizing and increasing the productivity of commodities traders.
To be a good trader, you have to know how to make decisions. To do so, you need to have all the relevant information at your fingertips so that you can take advantage of market opportunities and be faster than the competition. This is where Sparta has revolutionized the industry, as its platform not only aggregates the most relevant information, but also processes it and allows traders to communicate with their teams quickly and efficiently in the cloud. In addition, they allow trading firms to create their own databases featuring the most relevant historical information in order to learn from past experiences. This all takes place in the cloud and is therefore accessible from anywhere, meaning remote work is possible in a sector in which it is not at all common.
At the end of 2020 they launched their MVP on web and iOS and since then the product has grown at a dizzying pace. 2023 has been an amazing year with multiple new product launches completed and planned, rapid growth of their client base and ARR, and further significant financial backing from venture investors expected in Q3 to help accelerate their growth even faster. There are over 65 people shaping their premium products, providing maximum value to their users with each feature.
Sparta is looking to expand its data engineering capabilities. They are looking for Senior/Lead Data Engineers to work alongside their incoming Head of Data, data team, and development teams to refine and optimize the current data ingestion, ETL, and cleansing models.
The day-to-day work involves building new data ingestion pipelines using Python, SQL and AWS; data wrangling, management and standardization; data quality analysis and cleansing; and applying best practices in software development.
In the future they are planning to utilize their big data to build machine learning models and uncover hidden insights, but first, they must build a good foundation to ensure their long-term success.
You will get to influence their cloud data infrastructure design, take ownership of end-to-end data projects, and liaise with other parts of the business to ensure that they can leverage their data to create value for customers.
The type of person they are looking for is someone who brings their experience to the table, who is hungry and helps them to continue to grow. A team player, who likes to share and learn in equal parts, and whose objective is to continue to grow and help the team to find solutions for each challenge. Of course, you'll always be given the freedom to do what you do best.
Tu evolución
En 1 mes
The first month will be about settling into the team, getting to know people and getting used to working 100% remotely (if you don't have previous experience with this). They want you to have a say and will value the feedback you can give them about the way they do things, right from day one. Every member of the team is important for Sparta's growth and, of course, they want you to help them evolve all aspects of the organization.
During the first month, you'll become familiar with the team and the market in which they operate. You'll also be introduced to the product dynamics, and you'll participate in team sessions aimed at understanding the data feed to work with, and determining the best way to process and store it.
Tus responsabilidades
You'll be responsible, along with the rest of the team, for organising the infrastructure of the data acquisition and processing side in order to grow Sparta's product.
You'll assist in selecting, designing and implementing data warehouses for different situations (Redis, Kafka, Time-based databases...).
You'll analyse the performance of data storage and queries in order to improve it where possible.
You'll extract large datasets from different sources, standardising and storing them for use.
You’ll mentor junior members of the team.
¿Cómo lo harás?
The data team consists of an incoming Head of Data and a bunch of very talented Data engineers. There will be significant team growth in the next 12–18 months that will see the team multiply exponentially and also incorporate cutting edge data science focuses.
Our Leadership team and Commodity Owners have significant experience and market expertise in the oil trading space and help get the market data feeds that they’ll use. Most of the data standardization and processing requirements will come through them. However, they know that most of the time, the best features and ideas come from the technical team, so they'll be happy to hear new ideas and discuss them with you.
They work in an Agile framework with Jira so that nothing gets left behind, and they document everything in Confluence so that the information is always accessible ;)
They have retrospective meetings every two weeks, at the beginning of each Sprint, so that everything is well-defined.
¿Cuándo trabajarás?
At Sparta, staff really DO enjoy flexible working hours. The only thing they ask is that all members of the team are available during a particular time slot so that you can coordinate (you know, the daily, the Retro, meetings to discuss decisions, etc.).
Día laborable
Jornada completa
Vacaciones
23 días
Jornada laboral
Flexible
Turno continuo
Viernes¿Dónde trabajarás?
Remoto
Sparta began as a 100% REMOTE company. Felipe is based in Geneva, Miles in London and Luis in Basel and from that structure they have been growing.
The team is distributed throughout Spain, the UK, Switzerland, the US and Singapore. They strongly believe in the advantages of working remotely and in work-life balance:)
However, your expenses will be covered if you'd prefer to work in a co-working space.
What's more, they plan to meet up in person from time to time in a chosen location, so that it's not all virtual. Whenever they get together, it is always a great success!
¿Con quién trabajarás?
The team is well-balanced, experienced and well-oiled ♥️.
- Felipe Elink (CEO) - Has more than 15 years of experience in oil trading, particularly petrols and biofuels in BP and Gunvor (the fourth-largest oil trading company in the world). He's Spanish, married and has three children.
- Miles Moseley (COO) - Has 20 years of experience in petrol trading at BP. He's English, married and has two children.
- Luis Ibáñez (CPO) - Has spent ten years working as a programmer and another five managing development teams. He has worked in Spain, London and Switzerland. His latest venture was with Roche Pharmaceuticals. He has twice built teams from scratch and his ideas for keeping team members happy involve doing everything he expected to be done when he was a programmer.
- Paul Laight (CTO) - He has 20 years of experience building highly complex products, platforms, companies and teams within the FinTech space.
- Javier López (Staff Data Engineer) - Javi is a born leader. With almost ten years of experience as a programmer in backend, machine learning and big data, he is key to the evolution of Sparta's product as well as to the medium-and long-term vision of the team.
- Carlos Pérez (Senior Data Engineer) – Expert Data Engineer. With more than 15 years of experience, Carlos is a key member of the Data team. Since joining the team, he has helped to improve the algorithms for real-time data cleansing and data management.
Among them, there are some real manfredites... And more coming soon 😉.
¿Qué piden?
- Very good command of Java. They will need you to be very comfortable with this stack.
- Extensive experience with Python for ingesting, manipulating and loading data and expertise in using SQL to query, standardize, extract and load data.
- Expert understanding of relational databases and a good understanding of NoSQL databases.
- Experience in real-time/streaming data ETL (kafka preferred).
- Practical experience of modern software engineering techniques and best practices (version control, CI/CD, unit test, integration test, functional test, writing documentation…).
- Knowledge of Big Data/streaming data frameworks, with practical experience in architectural design and data warehousing solutions.
- Practical experience in AWS cloud services.
- Expertise in using Unix / Linux at the command line to perform software development and maintenance.
- Very good communication skills (both oral and written), and an advanced level of English. Sparta is a multinational company. The data team is diverse, and all meetings are in English.
And…bonus points ;)
- Experience in DevOps or MLOps.
- Knowledge in productionizing Data Science models.
- Good understand of data governance and security.
- Experience in data monitoring (e.g. Datadog).
Tecnologías
Innegociable
Java
Avanzado 
Python
Avanzado 
PostgreSQL
Intermedio 
SQL
Avanzado
Estaría bien
Kafka
Intermedio 
AWS
Avanzado
Otras habilidades
Innegociable
Capacidad de autogestión
Trabajo en equipo
Pensamiento analítico
Comunicación verbal
Estaría bien
Aprendizaje Continuo
Visión estratégica
Suma puntos
Proactividad
Idiomas
¿Qué ofrecen?
⏰ Flexible working hours, although they want to coincide with the rest of the team for four working hours.
🏥 Medical and dental insurance on a reimbursement basis.
💵 You will receive a share of the company's equity.
And also... 👀👇
Beneficios
Clases de Idiomas
Presupuesto para formación
Presupuesto para Conferencias
Seguro de salud
Dinámicas y eventos de teambuilding
Presupuesto para coworking
What the FAQ?
NO. El equipo va desde Córdoba a Londres pasando por Valencia y Salamanca.
Organizan puntualmente eventos presenciales de un par de días y esperan que te apetezca ir. Eso si, el coste de esos viajes lo asumen ellos of course :)
Yes, but for administrative reasons, they can only hire in Spain, the UK and/or Switzerland.
It will also be a fast and agile process. It'll consist of the following 3 steps:
- There'll be an initial 15' meeting with Travis, Head of Talent at Sparta.
- 90' technical interview with two senior Data Engineers. (Live coding exercise included).
- Final interview with the CTO.