Lead Data Engineer

About Lendable

Lendable is on a mission to make consumer finance amazing: faster, cheaper and friendlier.

We’re building one of the world’s leading fintech companies and are off to a strong start:

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• One of the UK’s newest unicorns with a team of >250 people
  
• Among the top 10 fastest-growing tech companies in the UK
  
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  Profitable since 2017
  
• Backed by top investors including Balderton Capital and Goldman Sachs and most recently OTPP (Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan) in 2022
  
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  Loved by customers with the best reviews in the market (4.9/5 across 10,000s of reviews)
  

So far, we’ve rebuilt the Big Three consumer finance products from scratch: loans, credit cards and car finance. We get money into our customers’ hands in minutes instead of days.

We’re growing fast, and there’s a lot more to do: we’re going after the two biggest Western markets (UK and US) where trillions are held by big banks with dated systems and painful processes. We launched our loans product in the US in 2022 with more product launches to follow this year!

Join us if you want to

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  Take ownership across a broad remit. You are trusted to make decisions that drive a material impact on the direction and success of Lendable from day 1.
  
• Work in small teams of exceptional people who are relentlessly resourceful to solve problems and find smarter solutions than the status quo.
  
• Build the best technology in-house, using new data sources, machine learning, and AI to make machines do the heavy lifting
  

About the role

We are looking for a Lead Data Engineer who will enable us to be more data-driven. Namely, someone who will empower the teams at Lendableto derive more value from our data, measure more performance metrics and do so more efficiently.

We are looking for an engineer whose work is maintainable, understandable, tested automatically, and reproducible (i.e., configuration as code). Furthermore, we are looking for someone with top-notch engineering fundamentals, good judgement when making tradeoffs, and empathy when managing goals for a diverse set of stakeholders.

As a leader, you will be a proven decision-maker and a great communicator. Using your experience in data engineering to inform and collaborate with a broad range of stakeholders from across Lendable, helping quantify value in objectives and set priorities. Leading a small and growing team you will be confident in mentoring other Data Engineers and actively discussing technology across the organisation.

Team missions

1. Protect customer data; store only what is necessary

2. Keep data safe, and contribute to conversations around security and policies

3. Empower every colleague with access to the data they need to make better decisions

4. Champion maintainable, tested, stable, and reproducible infrastructure such that the team’s access to information is sustainable long-term
   

What will you be doing?

You will be responsible for shaping our journey to become more data-driven with a combination of hands-on engineering and leadership. Along with the rest of the team, you will determine what we should build and how. And, of course, you’ll then get to bring it to life. For example, you can imagine yourself doing any of the following:

1. Help to design and build Lendable’s data platform

2. Connect internal data sources to our data warehouse

3. Use infrastructure as code to set up data pipelines

4. Automate testing and monitoring of data pipelines

5. Setting direction and prioritising objectives

6. Recommend when to buy and when to build

7. Shape the team by interviewing future colleagues

8. Provide mentoring and growth opportunities both in and outside for your team
   

Skills we are looking for

• History of using configuration as code as well as automated testing and deployment

• Deep understanding of how databases work, i.e., RDBMS-s, columnar stores, key-value stores (e.g., what happens under the hood when a database uses an index to respond to a query)

• Kindness and mentoring for other engineers in the team

• Expertise in data pipeline tools such as Airflow and dbt

• Deep experience in one of these technologies Redshift, Snowflake, or BigQuery

• Driving conversations with technical and non-technical stakeholders

• Creating roadmaps, setting out your vision, and collaboratively executing on it

• Vendor selection and management
  

Interview Process

We’re not a corporate so we try our best to get things moving as quickly as possible. For this role we’d expect:
 

• A quick phone call with one of the team

• A short coding exercise to complete in your own time

• Onsite or Video Interview

  • Discuss the exercise you completed

  • Meet the team you’ll work with daily
    

Life at Lendable (also check out our Glassdoor page)

• The opportunity to scale up one of the world’s most successful fintech companies

• Best-in-class compensation including equity

• You can work from home every Monday and Friday if you wish - on the other days we all come together IRL to be together, build and exchange ideas

• Our in-house chef prepares fresh, healthy lunches in the office every Tuesday-Thursday

• We care for our Lendies' well-being both physically and mentally so we opt for the highest coverage of private health insurance

• We organise an annual trip with the whole company, to celebrate our milestones and reflect on our achievements