Data Engineer

MISSION TO METRICS 
The mission of The Ocean Cleanup is to develop and scale technology to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. Data is critical to achieving our objectives: we acquire data that helps us better understand the plastic pollution problem and the impact that our actions have to maximize our performance and minimize negative environmental impact.

“As a Data Engineer at The Ocean Cleanup, you have a unique opportunity to work on something meaningful together with highly driven colleagues. You directly feel the responsibility for enabling the mission, for ensuring that we can make a difference” - Roberto Noorduijn Londoño - Lead Data engineer.

RESPONSIBILITIES
You will form part of an enabling team (Data & IT), participating in the team that maintains and evolves the Data Acquisition platform, helping the Data Scientists achieve their objectives, and working closely with the IT team to support the rest of the company. The role reports to the Lead Data Engineer and is based in our Rotterdam office. 

For this role, you will be working closely with Ocean’s Research & Development team. This team is responsible for developing knowledge through data analysis and research to deliver high-quality concepts and design optimizations of The Ocean Cleanup systems. The R&D team works closely with the Engineering team, the Computational Modeling team, and third parties to test and analyze concept ideas.

You will be helping R&D professionalize and improve existing data pipelines. The source of this data is managed by Data Engineering and consists of several micro-services running on edge Kubernetes clusters deployed onboard the vessels. These ingest data from onboard sensors and forward it to a centralized data platform which we maintain on our Azure Cloud infrastructure. This data is processed by R&D via Python-based processing pipelines running in a Data Science Platform (Dataiku). Through proper software engineering principles, knowledge of efficient data processing techniques and close collaboration with the data scientists, the aim is to ensure that R&D is well positioned to scale and maintain the pipelines as we scale up. 

Aside from data pipelines, you will also be responsible for the development and maintenance of software critical for the operation of Ocean systems. An example is the Steering App – an application responsible for providing real-time feedback on the most efficient direction to steer based on predicted plastic densities and data from onboard sensors. Currently, this tool is deployed as a MATLAB GUI on a remotely accessible Windows VM and thus requires restructuring to enable effective maintenance and development across a larger number of systems. 

The Ocean Cleanup consists of several departments, all driven for a change for good. Through frequent alignment sessions with the other Data Engineers, we ensure that all data needs are addressed and that we are in the best position to enable the most efficient collection of plastic possible.

Your responsibilities will include: 

• Converting technical requirements from Research & Development into efficient and maintainable data pipelines
• Collaborating closely with Data Scientists and Computational Modelers
• Meet with other Data Engineers to share best practices and ensure alignment between teams
• Developing and maintaining in-house software
• Improving the underlying (cloud) infrastructure
• Ensuring code quality through software principles and DevOps practices
• Helping to maintain the Data Acquisition Platform

PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATIONS  

• A minimum of 3 years' experience in Software Development in a professional environment
• Bachelor / Masters in a relevant field
• Familiarity with Agile methodologies
• Technical skills - must-haves: 
  • Proficient in Python 
    • Fastapi, flask, numpy, pandas / polars
  • Experience developing and maintaining (micro) web-services
  • Experience in Kubernetes
  • SQL, relational databases (PostgreSQL is a pre)
  • Cloud-first architectures (we use Azure)
  • Version control and CI/CD 
• Technical skills - nice to haves: 
  • Experience working with Data Scientists
  • Experience with BI and/or data visualization tools like Power BI 
  • Experience with monitoring tools like Sentry, Prometheus, Grafana
  • Experience with Spark, Databricks
  • Experience processing scientific / geospatial data 
    • NetCDF, PostGIS, Shapefiles...
  • Experience working in the Marine Technology sector

PERSONAL QUALIFICATIONS 

• You are able to prioritize, taking into account value, impact, and cost
• “Right tool for the job” know-how: you know how to create a solution and choose the best applicable technology
• Pragmatic team player, committed to deliver tangible results
• You thrive in a fast-paced, international environment
• Intrinsic motivation to work on our ambitious and meaningful goal
• Excellent communication skills

OTHER REQUIREMENTS

• Starting date: as soon as possible
• Work permit: a valid European Union work permit is highly preferred for this position (the role is based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands)
• Please note because we are a non-profit, our salaries reflect that of an organization fully reliant on donations rather than that of a commercial entity. Conducting a pre-employment check is part of our recruitment process.

Curious to hear how it is to work at The Ocean Cleanup? Listen to our team members explain their work in our podcast.