Lead Data Platform Engineer - AI Foundation

Description Strategic, high-impact & high-ownership role building the data foundation for our AI-first fintech & crypto platform. Build the foundational data platform for Deblock's AI-first transformation. You'll consolidate our data ecosystem (PostgreSQL, Kafka, BigQuery, GCS) into a clean, governed, and ML-ready platform. You'll work closely with our CTO and ML team to enable AI features through robust data infrastructure. Requirements Core Requirements: Strong experience with GCP (BigQuery, Dataflow, Cloud Storage, DataStream, AlloyDB/CloudSQL) Expert-level SQL Experience with dbt or similar for data modeling and testing Hands-on with streaming platforms (Kafka, Kafka Connect) Understanding of CDC tools (Debezium or similar) Experience building batch and real-time data pipelines Experience building dimensional models (fact/dimension tables) for analytics and ML features Experience implementing data governance: PII tagging, column-level security, access controls Experience with data quality monitoring with automated checks and alerting Understanding of observability: data freshness monitoring, schema change detection, pipeline health dashboards Experience optimising BigQuery performance (partitioning, clustering, query optimisation) Nice to Have: Experience with Feature Store architecture and ML feature requirements Understanding of real-time vs batch feature serving patterns Prior work with financial services or regulated data environments Familiarity with Vertex AI ecosystem Experience with Apache Beam/Dataflow transformations Background collaborating with ML/data science teams Knowledge of vector databases or semantic search concepts Benefits Competitive salary + stock options Private dental + health insurance The best tech for your job 30 days of paid holidays (excl. bank holidays) Option to work 100% remotely or come to the office - your choice! Ability to work abroad for 4 months a year Leading position with huge impact, autonomy and ownership