Senior Data Engineer, Vivacity
£70-90k
2-5 days a week in office (Old Street, London)
AI-powered traffic insights
Open for applications
AI-powered traffic insights
101-200 employees
Open for applications
£70-90k
2-5 days a week in office (Old Street, London)
101-200 employees
Company mission
To empower cities to put sustainable communities at the heart of their transport networks.
Role
Who you are
- You are a technical expert with a proven ability to creatively solve complex problems across a broad remit, manage production systems reliably, and navigate ambiguity to deliver impactful solutions
- You have a good understanding of distributed systems, data pipelines, and cloud infrastructure, and you thrive in an environment that values collaboration, continuous improvement, and technical excellence
- You proactively and effectively communicate with both technical and non-technical colleagues, earning trust and influence through your knowledge and proactive, considerate approach
- You are passionate about simplifying complex systems and seek opportunities to balance immediate delivery with long-term improvements
- You continue working on problems, even when you are not familiar with the problem space, and you know when and how to ask for help
- Expertise in Apache Kafka (ideally Kafka Strimzi), including broker management, scaling, upgrades, and integration with high-throughput data pipelines
- Experience managing PostgreSQL databases, including load analysis, query optimisation, and role management
- Experience with modern cloud infrastructure as GCP/AWS, Kubernetes, and Docker
- Proficiency in Unix systems, ideally Linux (we use Ubuntu)
- Strong communication skills, with experience mentoring engineers and collaborating with stakeholders
- Proven ability to resolve technical incidents in unfamiliar production systems
- Technical and process documentation champion
- Experience of operationally managing production software components, including observability, logging, metrics, error reporting, debugging, and live incident management
Desirable
- Proficiency with Hashicorp Vault including secret and role management
- Proficiency in one or more programming languages (we primarily use Go and TypeScript)
- Comfortable working with Infrastructure as Code, ideally Terraform
- Familiarity with common DevOps tools and CI/CD processes
- Proficiency with infrastructure management tools (e.g. Ansible, Chef, Puppet)
- Knowledge of information security principles, including identity and access management and authentication/authorisation processes
- Experience in a start-up or scale-up environment
- Passion for sustainability, transport or smart cities
What the job involves
- Reporting to: François-Xavier Decroix (Engineering Manager)
- As a Senior Data Engineer, you will take responsibility for continuously improving critical systems which transport hundreds of gigabytes of data per day and trillions of messages per year
- You will work closely with the broader team to bring innovative new datasets and insights to customers in a reliable, scalable, and cost-effective way
- Your work will be crucial in our mission to empower safe and sustainable transport around the world through data insights
- You will be the go-to person for our cloud data pipeline & underlying infrastructure, especially Apache Kafka and our PostgreSQL database
- You will also work with tech like Kubernetes, Vault, go microservices and other cloud services, as well as on-premise infrastructure
- Your technical expertise will be instrumental in developing and operating these systems for our existing and new products and features; you will be crucial in helping us maintain our market-leading position in the UK, and in scaling internationally
- In this role, you will work within the AI and cloud team, establish technical standards, lead architectural decision-making within your area of expertise, and proactively share knowledge with colleagues
- This role has the option to grow towards either a principal engineering role (a technical specialist leader) or an engineering manager (a team leader with line management) position at Vivacity, through structured career progression pathways
- Your time will be spent roughly as follows:
- 60% - Proactive technical work (e.g. migrating DB hosting provider, new message bus system proof of concept, deploying new algorithms to kubernetes)
- 20% - Reactive technical work (e.g. incident response, unblocking engineers, code review)
- 10% - Technical leadership initiatives (e.g. establishing technical standards, architectural principles, & staff training)
- 10% - Planning and administration
Application process
- 30 minute screening interview
- 1.5 hour system design interview where you work together with a VivaCity engineer
- 2.5 hours final round interview, split into a 1 hour technical experience interview, 1 hour soft skills interview, and 30 minutes with Shaun, our Head of Engineering
Salary benchmarks
Our take
Technological advancements have already changed the way we communicate, entertain ourselves and move around. VivaCity is here to bring the same advancements to the cities we live in, by implementing transport-focused smart cities.
The company uses cameras with on-board machine learning to quantify the movement of pedestrians, vehicles and cyclists, then builds predictive AI systems from this data. By delivering this live transport usage data 24/7, local authorities are empowered to recognise behaviour patterns - enabling them to improve safety.
VivaCity's technology has already been adopted by numerous UK councils and institutions, including Transport For London, Oxfordshire and Sunderland City Councils, and the University of Bristol. Funds raised by the company have been used to widen its product portfolio, as well as support expansion into North America.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Feb 2023
$9.4m
LATE VC
Sep 2022
$0.5m
GRANT
Total funding: $21.3m
Company benefits
- 25 days holiday
- Flexible working hours and locations
- Private pension with 3% employer contribution
- Health Assured employee assistance programme
- Annual company away trip
- Optional healthcare plan
- Annual personal training budget
- Home office set up budget
- Cycle to work scheme
- Fully stocked office kitchen
- Monthly social activity budget
Company values
- Be human: We’re welcoming, approachable and friendly, working in a mutually supportive way, where our default question is ‘how can I help?’ We show compassion and kindness to ourselves and others, building strong relationships and celebrating successes
- Challenge accepted: Pushing the boundaries and tackling challenging problems is at the heart of the company. We know that taking risks means that sometimes things fail, and that’s ok. But driven by curiosity, ingenuity, persistence and expertise, we step into the unknown to find a solution. When someone says ‘That’s impossible’, we say ‘Challenge Accepted!’
- Open by default: We value transparency and traceability and construct our processes around this. We share information freely and openly to help everyone understand the rationale behind decisions and why they are in the best interests of our people and company
- Speak your Mind: It’s better to have ten ideas that don’t pass muster – and one that does – than not share any for fear of getting it wrong. We can put ourselves out there and voice our ideas. We always give and receive feedback constructively, helping the team work better together, and recognise achievements and success
- Autonomy: Innovation is, by nature, bottom-up. It’s not for the people in charge to come up with all the ideas. It’s only by asking everyone to contribute and listening to all perspectives, that can we progress as a company and develop the best solutions. We empower people to take responsibility, be creative, experiment and push the boundaries
- Community First: Community first means welcoming everyone, regardless of background, race, gender, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic. We also always put community first when developing our solutions – gathering only anonymous insights, eliminating personal data and innovating to be a force for good in the world
Company HQ
London, UK
Leadership
Mark Nicholson
(Co-Founder & CEO)Graduated from Cambridge with a degree in Natural Sciences, where they met the other two co-founders whilst leading the solar car racing team. Previously an Associate Consultant at OC&C Strategy Consultants.
Yang Lu
(Co-Founder & Board Advisor)Former CTO of the company. Completed an Engineering degree at Cambridge where they were the Technical Director on the same solar car project. Spent a year as a Consultant at TTP.
Peter Mildon
(Co-Founder & COO)Studied Engineering at Cambridge, was the Chief Engineer on a solar car project. Spent 2 years as a Senior Engineer at Frazer-Nash consultancy.
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