Sr. Data Engineer
Use data to help Africa leapfrog into a clean energy future
Off Grid Electric is a growth-stage startup that’s on track to light a million homes in Africa over the next couple years with clean, affordable solar energy (see the articles at the bottom of this post). At the heart of our business is a mountain of historic and real-time data. We need an experienced data engineer to help us turn this raw asset into action.
This may be your dream job if you’re a data-obsessed technologist who can get passionate about bringing solar energy to off-grid markets — over 1.3 billion people around the world — with the unique social, technical, and business challenges that come along with it. Naturally, you’ll be hungry for adventure, inspired by the opportunity to unleash whole continents of human potential, and motivated to help build a truly epic business.
The role
As a senior member of Team Surge (our software and data group), the senior data engineer will help architect and lead implementation of systems that enable Off Grid to access and leverage its data effectively. Working closely with technologists, analysts and product managers, you will create bulletproof systems that enable us to deliver business intelligence, data science and new software features at an accelerating pace.
We’ll count on you to provide the following:
- Co-design our data pipeline, data processing and integration with our business intelligence tools and internal software platform. We are in the process of moving towards a robust, well-documented data infrastructure with a clean separation of concerns and denormalized data models.
- Mentoring and developing other DI engineers, helping the overall team achieve its goals through this ongoing transition
- Test-oriented approach to building systems. There will be a strong focus on the accuracy and maintainability of data systems, and this role will define architectural solutions and lead implementation of them.
- Drive improvements in efficiency, automation, and error detection
The senior data engineer will drive the development of a robust infrastructure to accommodate our rapidly expanding data streams. Our data warehousing process requires ongoing database maintenance, plus ETL design, deployment and operation. It is no small feat to keep the multiple data sources flowing smoothly into our system as schemas are extended or updated within our software, and third-party sources evolve. This is mission-critical for our commitments to deliver the following:
- Business Intelligence. Every part of our business has a ravenous appetite for historical data, which we make available to non-technical staff through our data analysis tool, Looker.
- Data science, which allows us to develop and apply predictive models to our business. You’ll work with collaborate with others to co-develop strategies to collect and analyze data, ensuring the business has the data it needs.
- Data-enriched software features. Functionality such as real-time user dashboards and automated workflows need seamless pipelines between our data systems and software platform. We need to be able to count on this data being available and accurate at all times.
This role requires travel to Arusha, Tanzania. Relocation option also available.
Must-have experience
- At least one programming language at a high proficiency level
- Moving data through an ETL pipeline
- Managing a SQL database
- Managing a Linux server (system monitoring, command line familiarity, etc)
- The AWS console
- Git
- Automated testing and other engineering best practices
- Understanding of relational database schemas / design and performance tuning
Nice-to-have experience
- Python
- Luigi
- AWS CloudFormation
- Chef / Puppet
- Hadoop / Spark
- Data analysis
- Postgres
- Redshift
- Docker
Perks
- Travel to some of the loveliest and most exotic parts of Africa
- The opportunity to directly improve millions of lives. By bringing sustainable electricity to a part of the world where 90% of people have no grid access. Few other activities can provide as fundamental impact to human lives as this.
- Some of the smartest, most committed, and hardest working co-workers in a distributed environment.
Let’s connect
Send us info about yourself to surge@offgrid-electric.com. We’ll get the ball rolling from there!
