Staff Data Engineer

Help us to collect, protect and scale our data usage across the entire organisation!

Pollen is on a mission to build, curate and deliver the best experiences all over the world. We want to give people a bigger life. When our members think back 10 years over their best memories, we want to be responsible for 3 of the 5 best ones. 

We think we can do this by transforming the way experiences are curated and executed by evolving from art-led to science-led as we scale. Data, science and technology are at the centre of this evolution and the Data Platform team makes a critical contribution by collecting, protecting and making data easy to use for the entire organisation. 

Data engineers in the Data Platform team enable everyone at Pollen to produce and consume data. They architect and implement the infrastructure (e.g. using Terraform, Docker) that makes producing and consuming data possible (e.g. Snowflake, Airflow, dbt, Looker, Notebooks). They collect and protect data from across our internally owned and externally procured systems landscape into our data platform. They manage the tooling that makes it easy to produce and consume data products (and services) from data on the platform.  Ultimately, they make it possible for Pollen to combine, enrich and  consume data safely at scale so we can better achieve our company mission.

In the first 12 months you will:

• Own and design our ingestion patterns for all mission critical data sources:
  • Work with the Product Engineers and your fellow Data Engineers to establish a pattern of ingesting event logs and operational data stores from both frontend and backend services, including partnering with Product Data Scientists to establish event log schema conventions. The configurable ingestion pipelines (I.E Python) for these sources should then push their data into S3 and then surface availability of the data in Snowflake.
  • Success will be measured by the percentage of Pollen data sources that are already ingested into S3 and Snowflake with each source meeting respective accuracy, recency and availability SLOs.
• Architect with the team and expand the capabilities of our data platform:
  • Design self-service and user-friendly tools, libraries, APIs, and services that empower data professionals to harness the potential of our data; this will be in the areas such as data discovery, data observability and experimentation.
  • Success will be measured by factors such as: stability (E.G. uptime), direct feedback from data professionals on ease of use & empowerment and an improved understanding of the characteristics of the data on the platform such as accuracy, recency and lineage.
• Champion the implementation of operational excellence across all our data infrastructure and pipelines.
  • Nurture and push forward our shared practices for defining service level indicators, setting service level objectives and developing monitoring & alerting and CI/CD through excellence in your own practice, providing support to your colleagues as needed.
  • Success will be measured by the percentage coverage of service level objectives, with monitoring and alerting, across all our data infrastructure and pipelines.
• Support the team in improving the configurability of our data infrastructure:
  • Work across the team and with the Engineering to complete our migration to  Infrastructure as Code and containerized workloads using tools such as Terraform and Docker respectively. If you do not have direct experience with either tool, no problem! We are happy to develop you in these areas.
  • Success will be measured by the percentage of data services defined and planned through declarative configuration, and therefore able to be managed through Terraform. 
• Collaborate across the team to implement automated processes for adhering to our Data Governance and Privacy Policy: 
  • Work with the Data Engineering Lead across the engineering community at Pollen to successfully adopt the right technologies and practices as needed to enact our high privacy standards with minimal intervention by people.
  • Success will be measured jointly across the company on the time spent (minutes) by analysts and engineers on executing on our privacy and governance policy. 
• Coach and mentor other engineers in the team:
  • Help all the engineers in the team make stretch improvements in their already strong code quality and technical problem solving. Be the engineer that everyone looks to for tips on how to improve their engineering practices.
  • Success will be measured by both the observable growth in the team (e.g.  reduced lead time, increased deployment frequency, etc) and the direct feedback you get from them about the positive impact you’re having on their practices. 
• Find your stretch!
  • Data Engineers at Pollen own their results (e.g. those above) and from there can choose to execute work on Machine Learning engineering, including working with Data Scientists and deploying ML models, or execute downstream on engineering analytical friendly datasets (e.g with dbt).
  • Your stretch is completely up to you!

What you’ll love

• Working with awesome data and ML technologies including Snowflake, DBT, AirFlow in a cloud services environment configured with Terraform (we currently use GCP but will move to AWS as we expand data science capabilities) 
• Being in a fast growing organisation built on the drivers of intrinsic motivation --  Freedom & Ownership, Mastery and Belonging -- and loving what you do
• Embracing a passion for learning, fostering a growth mindset and overcoming limiting beliefs so you become 10x better as an engineer than when you joined 
• Getting to know more about what gives you energy, what you’re really good at and being supported by an experienced development champion as you pursue further data mastery and drive your own development 
• Enjoy the freedom to work where you need, when you need, taking as many holidays as you need so you can stay motivated and achieve your results in the best way possible
• Being in a diverse organisation where we value belonging and transparency (e.g. salaries for all our roles are published monthly!)

About our culture

• We are results focused so you can choose your own hours & take as much vacation as you need to drive results and perform at your best. Watch our CEO talk about our innovative culture.
• Read our CEO’s open letter about our focus on Belonging, and about the mission of our women’s programme Illuminate.
• Everyone is an equity owner in the company.

Find out more about our culture and life at Pollen on Instagram.

About Pollen

Pollen builds, curates, and delivers the best travel experiences using technology, a network of global partners, and a data-driven customer-led mindset – pairing world class entertainment with the world’s most exciting destinations.

Pollen brings you all the best experiences on pollen.co. We have two offerings: Pollen Presents and Pollen+. Pollen Presents curates experiences around your tastes and preferences you can’t find anywhere else. These experiences bring together music, sports, wellness and beyond to enable you and your friends to connect around one-of-a-kind itineraries in exciting destinations. Pollen+ always gets you more at music festivals and events when you book through us. Pollen+ partners with the biggest promoter brands and music festivals, including We Are FSTVL, Austin City Limits, Bonnaroo, C3, Electric Zoo, Live Nation and more. 

Pollen was founded in 2014 by brothers Callum & Liam Negus-Fancey. Pollen is backed by prominent investors including Kindred, Northzone, Sienna Capital, Backed and Draper Spirit. Pollen has raised over $100 million in VC funding.

GDPR Statement

When you apply to a job on this site, the personal data contained in your application will be collected by Streetteam Software Limited t/a Pollen (“Controller”), which is located at 3 Loughborough Street, Vauxhall, London, SE11 5RB and can be contacted by emailing talent@pollen.co. Controller’s privacy officer is Stephanie Ng-Fragner, who can be contacted at stephanie.ng-fragner@pollen.co. Your personal data will be processed for the purposes of managing Controller’s recruitment related activities, which include setting up and conducting interviews and tests for applicants, evaluating and assessing the results thereto, and as is otherwise needed in the recruitment and hiring processes. Such processing is legally permissible under Art. 6(1)(f) of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation) as necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the Controller, which are the solicitation, evaluation, and selection of applicants for employment. 

Your personal data will be shared with Greenhouse Software, Inc., a cloud services provider located in the United States of America and engaged by Controller to help manage its recruitment and hiring process on Controller’s behalf. Accordingly, if you are located outside of the United States, your personal data will be transferred to the United States once you submit it through this site. Because the European Union Commission has determined that United States data privacy laws do not ensure an adequate level of protection for personal data collected from EU data subjects, the transfer will be subject to appropriate additional safeguards under either the standard contractual clauses or the Privacy Shield. You can obtain a copy of the standard contractual clauses by contacting us at legal@pollen.co. 

Your personal data will be retained by Controller as long as Controller determines it is necessary to evaluate your application for employment. In the event that you are unsuccessful during the recruitment process, your personal data will still be retained by Controller for up to a year for the purposes of assessing your application for future vacancies. Under the GDPR, you have the right to request access to your personal data, to request that your personal data be rectified or erased, and to request that processing of your personal data be restricted. You also have the right to data portability. Please notify us if you would like your personal data erased. In addition, you may lodge a complaint with an EU supervisory authority, including the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk).