Senior Data Engineer - the Keys

The Keys is a team that has existed since before Spotify went public. In fact, from the beginning its mission had to do with listing the company: it is the team that computes company key metrics like Monthly Active Users and Subscribers. The metrics are used both externally, by investors who track the company’s success, and also internally, by the company itself to make strategic decisions. To achieve this, we introduced several intermediate steps that have shown crucial for Spotify’s data architecture: instrumenting all clients to deliver critical events, publishing user aggregates, and dealing with global incidents.
We are looking for a Senior Data Engineer to join us! As such, we need you to be technically knowledgeable about distributed computing and large data infrastructure. On the other hand, we are also looking for someone who is comfortable leading workstreams, mentoring others, and understanding the requirements of very disparate stakeholders. The Keys’ work impacts many aspects of the company and is in turn impacted by most changes to the underlying platform.

Who you are

• has a technical university degree, such as computer science, electrical engineering, math/science, or equivalent work experience.
• 3+ years using distributed data processing frameworks, such as Beam, Spark, and Hadoop has a track record of delivering complex projects, coordinating with other developers, and across teams.
• can summarize. 
• or else, can go into lots of detail when needed, such as reasoning at compile time about the performance of a change, when debugging a problem based on variable types, or finding the root cause of an incident that skewed metrics only for some cohorts of users.
• has a reasonable familiarity with current practices of software development: Scrum, RFCs, TDD, CI, DevOps.

Additionally, we would love to see that

• you know Scala. Bonus points if you also know Scio, Spotify's open-source processing framework, but this is not a requirement.
• used Google Cloud Platform for any significant amount of time.
• you have led migrations of data schemas with breaking changes for hundreds of downstream consumers. Even better, you can reason about the need for breaking changes, or their absence, in a planned change to a data schema.
• you have worked producing metrics for a global platform with several hundred million users who are active around the clock, producing billions of stream events. In that case, well, it's a perfect match!

Where you'll be

• We are a distributed workforce enabling our band members to find a work mode best for them! Where in the world? This role can be within the EMEA region in which we have a work location.
• Prefer an office to work from home instead? Not a problem! We have plenty of options for your working preferences.
• Find more information about our work from anywhere options here.
• Working hours? We operate within the Central European time zone for teamwork.

In addition to Spotify's internal culture, and of course a competitive salary and other compensation, we like to think that this position is special because of the team itself. The Keys has always been a team with a strong internal culture of its own, capable of delivering solid engineering even in difficult times. As the company grows, the team needs to scale out both in size and seniority, which is where you would fit in.
Spotify is an equal opportunity employer. You are welcome at Spotify for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what’s playing in your headphones. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. The more voices we have represented and amplified in our business, the more we will all thrive, contribute, and be forward-thinking! So bring us your personal experience, your perspectives, and your background. It’s in our differences that we will find the power to keep revolutionizing the way the world listens.
Spotify transformed music listening forever when we launched in 2008. Our mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the chance to enjoy and be passionate about these creators. Everything we do is driven by our love for music and podcasting. Today, we are the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service.