Lead Data Engineer

About this role

<h3 class="p1">🧡 <strong>About Alma</strong></h3> <p class="p1">At Alma, we believe sustainable commerce depends on fair, well-balanced trade. Because finance plays a pivotal role in business, our mission is to put it back in its rightful place - serving merchants and consumers.</p> <p class="p1">Our installment and deferred payment solutions help merchants boost sales by 20% or more, increase customer loyalty, and deliver a seamless shopping experience - without encouraging bad debt.</p> <p class="p1">As the buy now pay later leader in France and active in 10 European countries, we've empowered over +25,000 merchants and 10 million consumers.</p> <p class="p1">With 380+ Almakers and €100M+ ARR, Alma is scaling rapidly across Europe as a member of the Next40, and we're just getting started!</p> <p class="p2">&nbsp;</p> <h3 class="p1">👐 <strong>About the team</strong></h3> <p class="p1">You will join the Data Engineering team, which is moving closer to the Platform organization to strengthen collaboration with SRE and Software Engineering and improve SLA standards on the data platform.<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="p1">You will report to Jonathan, Engineering Manager of the SRE team, and work within a broader data community of 3 Central Data Analysts, 2 Product Data Analysts, 6 Business Analysts, and a 5-person AI team.</p> <p class="p1">This position is a permanent contract (CDI) based in Paris.</p> <p class="p2">&nbsp;</p> <h3 class="p1">💼 <strong>About the job</strong></h3> <p class="p1"><strong>Own and scale the data platform</strong></p> <ul class="ul1"> <li class="li1">Build, maintain, and improve our data warehouse, transformation layer, and platform architecture (including the critical link between PostgreSQL and our GCP data lake) to make our stack faster, more reliable, and more resilient.</li> </ul> <p class="p1"><strong>Raise engineering standards across the data stack</strong></p> <ul class="ul1"> <li class="li1">Drive CI/CD practices, staging environments, automated testing, infrastructure-as-code (Terraform), access management, and release management — bringing a platform engineering mindset to data.</li> </ul> <p class="p1"><strong>Ensure observability and platform reliability</strong></p> <ul class="ul1"> <li class="li1">Lead incident management, data quality monitoring, lineage, and documentation efforts to ensure the platform remains trustworthy and easy to operate for analysts, product teams, and AI practitioners.</li> </ul> <p class="p1"><strong>Shape technical decisions and enable the team</strong></p> <ul class="ul1"> <li class="li1">Take ownership of complex architectural decisions (including tooling audits, e.g. Datastream),</li> <li class="li1">Contribute to AI data use cases (BigQuery integrations with tools like Dust, Claude Code, and Nao),</li> <li class="li1">Mentor other data practitioners on engineering best practices,</li> <li class="li1">Share knowledge, document decisions, and contribute to raising engineering standards across the team.</li> </ul> <p class="p2">&nbsp;</p> <h3 class="p1">🧰 <strong>You will work with</strong></h3> <p class="p1">GCP, BigQuery, PostgreSQL, Cloud SQL, Terraform, Kubernetes, Argo Workflow, Airflow, AirByte, dbt, Python, GitHub, CI/CD, Looker, Metabase</p> <p class="p2">&nbsp;</p> <h3 class="p1">🧩 <strong>About you</strong></h3> <p class="p1"><strong>To succeed in this job</strong></p> <ul class="ul1"> <li class="li1"><strong>6+ years of experience</strong>&nbsp;as a Data Engineer, ideally in a fast-growing tech environment, with hands-on experience building and maintaining modern data platforms and orchestration workflows</li> <li class="li1">Strong command of&nbsp;<strong>cloud infrastructure, infrastructure-as-code</strong>&nbsp;(Terraform),&nbsp;<strong>Kubernetes</strong>, and&nbsp;<strong>Python</strong>&nbsp;— you're comfortable owning both the data and the platform layer</li> <li class="li1"><strong>Analytical mindset with a strong capacity to challenge the status quo</strong>&nbsp;— you don't just build, you question whether we're building the right thing</li> <li class="li1"><strong>Fluency in French and English</strong></li> </ul> <p class="p2">&nbsp;</p> <p class="p1"><strong>And it will be nice if you also</strong></p> <ul class="ul1"> <li class="li1">Have specific experience with&nbsp;<strong>GCP</strong>&nbsp;and BigQuery at scale</li> <li class="li1">Have worked with&nbsp;<strong>dbt</strong>&nbsp;for data transformation</li> <li class="li1">Have experience operating in or alongside an&nbsp;<strong>SRE or Platform Engineering</strong>&nbsp;culture</li> </ul> <p class="p2">&nbsp;</p> <p class="p1"><em>Don't meet every single requirement? At Alma, we believe great hires come from diverse paths. If this role excites you, we encourage you to apply. We value potential, curiosity and the ability to grow as much as experience.</em></p> <p class="p2">&nbsp;</p> <h3 class="p1">🧘 <strong>What's in it for you</strong></h3> <p class="p1">If you join, you will be able to grow and impact on:</p> <ul class="ul1"> <li class="li1"><strong>A pivotal moment for data at Alma</strong>&nbsp;— you'll join as the team transitions toward Platform, with a mandate to audit and reshape the stack, not just maintain it.</li> <li class="li1"><strong>End-to-end ownership</strong>&nbsp;— from architectural decisions on the PostgreSQL-to-GCP pipeline to enabling AI use cases with BigQuery, this is a high-autonomy, high-visibility role.</li> <li class="li1"><strong>Cross-functional leverage</strong>&nbsp;— your work will directly improve the productivity of a 20+ person data community and fuel better decisions across the entire company.</li> </ul> <p class="p2">&nbsp;</p> <h3 class="p1">🤑 <strong>Compensation &amp; benefits</strong></h3> <ul class="ul1"> <li class="li1"><strong>Competitive salary</strong>&nbsp;based on 12 months</li> <li class="li1"><strong>Profit-sharing and employee savings plan</strong><