Lead Data Engineer

Vend is home of FINN, Blocket, Tori, Oikotie, DBA & Bilbasen, major Nordic technology platforms connecting millions across the Nordics in Mobility, Real Estate, Jobs, and Recommerce sectors. The role is within Vend Polska in Kraków with a hybrid work model: 3 days remote per week and 2 days in office.

• Deep expertise in event-driven architecture, including Kafka topic design, Change Data Capture (CDC), schema evolution, streaming and batch patterns.
• Practical experience with cloud data platforms such as GCP, BigQuery, or Snowflake.
• Familiarity with data quality frameworks and observability tools.
• Ability to work within a federated data ownership model like Data Mesh.
• Strong communication skills in English.
• Natural educator and coach who can introduce modern data practices to product teams.

Nice to have:

• Experience with Snowflake and BigQuery.

Championing the Data Operating Model:

• Serve as the core checkpoint for the Data Operating Model within the assigned vertical.
• Track progress against company-wide data product coverage goals.

Team Enablement:

• Guide teams end-to-end from event emission through to discoverable products in the data catalog.

Lifecycle Management:

• Own versioning, breaking changes, and deprecations in data products.

Typical Week:

• Perform deep technical reviews on event schemas and Kafka topic designs.
• Coach product teams on data product development.
• Collaborate with central platform teams to maintain standards.