Senior Engineering Manager, Kpler
Supply & Demand
Real-time trade intelligence tools for global markets
Be an early applicant
Real-time trade intelligence tools for global markets
501-1000 employees
Be an early applicant
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To facilitate efficient and sustainable trade through the provision of state-of-the art, technology-led data, analytics and market insight.
Role
Who you are
- Overall 8+ years of engineering management experience, including at least 3 years leading teams of 5+ engineers on production, data-intensive systems
- Proven success building autonomous, high-performing teams that own systems end-to-end—from data ingestion to client-facing APIs
- Experience managing distributed or remote teams across multiple time zones
- Track record of recruiting, developing, and retaining engineering talent, with confidence in performance management and career growth conversations
- Strong experience managing teams that build and operate scalable data pipelines or ETL systems using tools like Airflow, Dagster, or Prefect
- Hands-on background with Python backend systems (FastAPI, pandas/polars, SQLAlchemy), as IC or manager
- Proficient with cloud-native infrastructure on AWS (or equivalent), including RDS/Aurora PostgreSQL, S3, Kubernetes/ECS, IAM, and Terraform
- Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, GitOps practices, and deployment automation (GitHub Actions, ArgoCD)
- Strong operational mindset: SLOs/SLIs, incident management, on-call rotations, and post-mortems
- Don’t meet every single requirement? Research shows that women and people of color are less likely than others to apply if they feel like they don’t match 100% of the job requirements. Don’t let the confidence gap stand in your way, we’d love to hear from you! We understand that experience comes in many different forms and are dedicated to adding new perspectives to the team
Desirable
- Experience managing teams building APIs in TypeScript/Node.js (NestJS, Express, GraphQL/Apollo); the crew’s API layer is TypeScript-based
- Familiarity with production ML systems (e.g., Prophet-based anomaly detection for data quality)
- Experience in commodities, energy, or fintech domains
- Exposure to Dataiku or similar data science platforms used by analyst teams
- Experience with monorepo architectures and shared library/framework design patterns
- Familiarity with observability tooling (Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana) and API gateway management (Kong)
- Experience managing teams serving both internal platform consumers and external API clients (dual-interface API patterns)
- Background in organisations using tribe/squad/crew models (Spotify model or similar)
What the job involves
- We are seeking a Senior Engineering Manager to lead Kpler’s Supply & Demand (S&D) crew within the Commodities Tribe
- The team develops the computation engine that delivers real-time global supply and demand balances for oil, LNG, and grains, combining diverse data sources, analyst expertise, and machine learning to support critical trading decisions
- You will be responsible for the end-to-end delivery of a portfolio of 12+ production systems, including data pipelines, ML-driven quality assurance, APIs, and cloud infrastructure (AWS, Kubernetes, Airflow)
- Your mandate is to build and sustain a high-performing, autonomous team that owns outcomes from data ingestion through to client-facing products
- You will establish and maintain high standards of operational excellence across SLOs, incident management, and continuous improvement, while fostering a strong culture of ownership supported by robust CI/CD and observability practices
- The team already operates at an elite level; your focus will be to sustain and extend this performance as the product scope expands
- This role reports to the Tribe Lead of the Commodities Tribe
- Build and sustain an autonomous crew that owns systems end-to-end, from data pipelines to APIs including production operations, incident management, and on-call, while removing organisational blockers to maximise delivery focus
- Champion SLO-driven reliability (via Datadog), with robust runbooks, blameless post-mortems, and a strong emphasis on proactive observability to detect issues before users
- Structure and prioritise work with clear milestones and a consistent delivery cadence, balancing short-term operational needs with longer-term strategic initiatives; use metrics (e.g. velocity, cycle time, effort allocation) to inform decisions and ensure transparency
- Maintain high engineering standards by creating space for testing, automation, observability, documentation, and technical debt reduction; guide architectural decisions across Python and TypeScript systems
- Oversee AWS infrastructure (Terraform-managed) and platform components (ArgoCD, Airflow), ensuring scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency while supporting expansion into new commodity domains
- Develop and retain engineers through clear goals, regular feedback, and career development, fostering high performance while addressing challenges with empathy and clarity
- Partner with recruitment to maintain a strong hiring bar and ensure the team is appropriately staffed and balanced in skills and seniority
- Collaborate closely with Product, Research, and Data teams, communicating progress, managing risks, and increasing the visibility and impact of the crew’s work
- Leverage retrospectives, health checks, and existing metrics to drive continuous improvement, building on an already strong data-driven culture
- Share and scale best practices across the wider engineering organisation, contributing to broader technical excellence and consistency
Our take
Even as more and more industries digitise, processes in legacy industries such as trade remain relatively archaic – with commodity markets running on incomplete, dispersed and sometimes inaccurate information. Kpler, founded in 2014, brings data technology to trade, in order to make the space more efficient and sustainable.
Kpler is the leader in its field, claiming ten times the revenue and commercial footprint of its nearest competitor. The company supplies real-time, transparent data on commodity markets, as well as actionable insights for those acting in the industry. Partnerships with leading data providers and analytics firms have bolstered Kpler’s offerings to cover a range of markets across the trading space, cementing its leadership as a provider of commodity market data.
On top of this, the company has secured massive funding for its continued expansion, received atop already impressive growth and between 2022 and 2023, acquired five companies. The investment is being used to make more smart acquisitions, of note within the growing maritime analytics and logistics market, hire talent, and accelerate development to ensure it remains at the forefront of its field.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
92% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (1 round)
Apr 2022
$220m
GROWTH EQUITY VC
Total funding: $220m
Company benefits
- Hybrid working environment: Work in office spaces at central locations, sponsored co-working hubs or in a full-remote set-up.
- WFH monthly allowance: We provide top of the range office equipment along with a set-up budget for whatever you need. Along with a monthly allowance for electricity and wi-fi.
- Health insurance coverage: We offer health insurance coverage for employees to ensure you are always safe and healthy.
- Time-off when you need it: Global maternity, parental, medical, festivals, and compassionate leave policies aligned to the contemporary needs of the family, and individual choices.
- Regular outings and social events: We hold regular events (online and on-site) for staff to socialise and interact with each other in the team.
Company HQ
Etterbeek, Brussels
Leadership
Jean Maynier
(Co-Founder & CTO)Non-Executive Director at Spark Commodities. Co-founder and former CEO of eCO2Market. Previously a System Adviser at CDPQ, with experience as a Business Analyst.
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