Senior Data Platform Engineer, Tala
$130-160k
Financial services in emerging markets
Open for applications
Financial services in emerging markets
501-1000 employees
Open for applications
$130-160k
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To build a modern credit infrastructure where consumer credit is more accessible.
Role
Who you are
- 5+ years of experience in software engineering, with strong proficiency in Python
- 3+ years of experience building and maintaining streaming data systems (Kafka, Spark, AWS Kinesis, Flink)
- Proven experience deploying infrastructure as code using Terraform or CloudFormation
- Background in a software or platform engineering environment, ideally supporting internal developer or data teams
- Advanced degree in Engineering or a related technical field
- Prior experience working remotely in a distributed team environment
Desirable
- Experience building and maintaining data lakes, ideally using Delta Lake or Apache Iceberg
- Experience collaborating with Machine Learning Engineers or Data Scientists on Feature Store design and maintenance
- Familiarity with SRE principles and DevOps/DataOps best practices
What the job involves
- The Data Platform Engineering team is building the foundation for a best-in-class decision engine—empowering data scientists, machine learning engineers, and analytics teams to deliver insights and intelligence at scale
- As a Data Platform Engineer, you’ll design, build, and evolve the infrastructure and tooling that enable our internal teams to move fast, work efficiently, and make data-driven decisions.
- You’ll collaborate closely with cross-functional partners to ensure reliability, scalability, and ease of use across the data ecosystem.
- You’ll also help guide backend and frontend teams in adopting an Event-Driven Data Mesh architecture, ensuring consistency and high-quality data flows throughout the organization
- Design, build, and maintain scalable data infrastructure to power analytics, machine learning, and business intelligence use cases
- Develop and evolve data pipelines and streaming systems using technologies like Kafka, Spark, AWS Kinesis, and Flink
- Implement infrastructure as code using Terraform or CloudFormation across AWS, GCP, or Azure environments
- Partner with Data Scientists, MLEs, and Analytics Engineers to ensure data accessibility, quality, and reliability
- Champion best practices for DataOps, observability, and reliability within the data platform
- Contribute to architectural decisions and help drive adoption of an Event-Driven Data Mesh across teams
Our take
Billions of people across the globe are unable to access traditional forms of credit, typically because of a lack of credit history or inconsistencies in their records. When making credit decisions, banks will rely on third party credit scores, whilst online lenders look at an applicant's financial history.
Tala is addressing this shut-out segment with an innovative model to assessing eligibility for a loan. Focusing on behavioral data tracked through its Android app, it creates a custom credit profile by analysing a customer's texts and calls logs, merchant transactions and overall app usage. Its machine learning algorithms then evaluate individual risk and provide instant loans.
More than 2 million people in emerging markets in countries such as India and Kenya have borrowed through Tala. The business has lent over $1 billion to consumers to date and is now scaling up its operations in India. It does face competition from the likes of Branch, but has nonetheless made promising strides thus far.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
19% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 9 rounds)
Oct 2021
$145m
SERIES E
Aug 2019
$110m
SERIES D
Total funding: $350.7m
Company benefits
- Opportunities to travel to the international offices (Mexico City, Nairobi, Manila and Bangalore)
- Free massages in the office
- Healthy snacks
- Every Tuesday an expert teaches a master class
- Sponsorship opportunities to attend professional conferences
- Ping pong
- Intramural leagues
- Go-karting
- Workout classes
- Work from home opportunities
- Health insurance
Company HQ
Santa Monica, CA
Leadership
Shivani Siroya
(Founder & CEO)Shivani has worked as an Analyst for Credit Suisse, UBS Financial Services, Citigroup, Janani and the United Nations Population Fund. They are also a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum.
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