Senior Backend / Data Engineer, Source.ag
Scale-Up
€90-115k
More information about location
2 days a week in office
AI for agriculture
Job no longer available
AI for agriculture
21-100 employees
Job no longer available
€90-115k
More information about location
2 days a week in office
21-100 employees
Company mission
To grow a prosperous and healthy community connecting food, fun, tech, and farming.
Role
Who you are
- We prioritize how you operate over formal titles, though you should have the experience to recognize scale-up challenges before they arise. While high-level technical proficiency is a baseline requirement, what distinguishes a successful candidate in this role is their judgment
- Have 10+ years of professional software engineering experience
- Have significant experience building and operating production backend and/or data-intensive systems
- Have spent at least 5 years in startup or scale-up environments where rapid growth created significant technical pressure
- Are comfortable making informed decisions even with incomplete information
- Value delivering results and iterative learning over excessive debate and rigid process
- We strongly encourage you to apply even if you feel you do not "tick every box"—we are looking for the right person, not just a perfect resume
What the job involves
- We are looking for a Senior Backend / Data Engineer to help us simplify, stabilize, and evolve our systems as the company grows
- This is an individual contributor role focused on high-level technical impact rather than people management or repetitive feature production. It is a role for engineers who value ownership, sound judgment, and the ability to act effectively even when information is incomplete. You will work on business-critical systems that other teams depend on, taking responsibility for how those systems behave in production
- Working in scale-up environments where systems and processes are still evolving
- Taking full ownership of problems, from first principles to production
- Simplifying architectures that have grown too complex
- Taking initiative without waiting for perfect alignment or explicit permission
- Designing, building, and operating backend services and data-heavy systems
- Improving the reliability, performance, and cost-efficiency of existing platforms
- Simplifying service boundaries, data flows, and infrastructure choices
- Supporting product teams by making core systems easier and safer to use
- Identifying potential scaling bottlenecks and resolving them proactively
- Taking personal responsibility for the systems you develop and maintain
- Our stack today includes Golang, Python, Databricks / Delta Lake, PostgreSQL, and AWS — but we prioritize your judgment and problem-solving skills over experience with any specific tool
- After the first 6–12 months, success in this role looks like:
- Core systems are simpler, more predictable, and easier to change than when you arrived
- Teams operate with more autonomy because the underlying systems are more reliable and better understood
- Fewer production issues occur due to unclear ownership or hidden coupling
- Architecture, data flow, and infrastructure decisions become more efficient over time
- You have established deep trust to act on important problems independently
- Our tech stack:
- Backend: Golang, Python
- Frontend: TypeScript, React, Next.js
- Communication: gRPC, GraphQL, REST, AWS EventBridge/SNS/SQS
- Data: Databricks, Delta Lake, S3, PostgreSQL (RDS), TimescaleDB, MongoDB Atlas
- Infrastructure: AWS (ECS, Lambda), Docker, Vercel
- Monitoring: Datadog
Our take
Dutch agtech Source.ag installs AI-powered indoor farms in order to democratise access to sufficient fruit and vegetables whilst using fewer resources. Given that almost 45% of people worldwide do not have access to enough fruit and veg, this is a sizable problem to address.
As the climate crisis worsens, the company's services are in high demand, as indoor farms are essential in providing higher food security under increasingly challenging weather conditions. Source's hi-tech farms are able to protect crops against extreme heat, cold, rainfall or pests.
The company continues to invest in the development of its software that is making greenhouses smarter, whilst also onboarding new customers and expanding partnerships. It is well-funded, which has enabled accelerated product development and supported the expansion of commercial collaborations.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
72% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)
Nov 2025
$17.5m
SERIES B
Jun 2023
$4m
SERIES A
Total funding: $54.5m
Company HQ
Sloten en Riekerpolder, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Leadership
Rien Kamman
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously acted as Associate Director of Data Science for BCG GAMMA and as the Principal for Boston Consulting Group.
Ernst van Bruggen
(Co-Founder & CCO)Previously spent over five years at McKinsey & Company, eventually acting as Engagement Manager.
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