Geospatial Data Engineer

Maps are no longer static. Our maps represent the ever-evolving world, accessing, aggregating, and adapting anonymous data from millions of sensors and phones in real-time. Mapbox has the exciting opportunity to power devices and products across the next frontier in location-based data, such as Internet of Things and AR/VR.

Whether you’re watching the delivery of your grocery order on Instacart, looking at a gym on ClassPass, sending your snaps on Snap, tracking your personal best on Strava, monitoring your gas budget on Metromile, or checking today’s forecast on The Weather Channel, Mapbox is the location and maps within those apps. We’re changing how people move by live-mapping the world. We are the developer platform for location.

What We Do

Mapbox is the Big Data location company that lays behind the scenes of most popular applications. Our portfolio of geodata is the basis for all of our maps, whether it is a visual or a navigation map; whether it is a map for business intelligence, logistics, or consumer social app; whether it is roads, buildings, points-of-interest, or mountains on a satellite imagery map, the common foundation on all of them is Data. 

Data teams at Mapbox are responsible for sourcing, processing, conflating and delivering high quality location-oriented data to enable internal and external customers. One of those data teams, the Boundaries team, is responsible for Mapbox’s best in class geographic boundaries that are delivered across multiple layers of our map and via our Search Geocoder. The team organizes geographic information on a global scale for our customers in an intuitive hierarchy. Specifically, this means normalizing multiple data sources into consumable, high-quality data layers that accurately and precisely captures millions of boundary polygons.

Some blog posts about our work over the last year:

• High Resolution Administrative Country Polygons
• Improving pandemic visualizations with Mapbox Boundaries
• Using Boundaries for election analysis
• Why we continue to improve boundary data
• Two million new boundaries to understand your data

What You’ll Do

Our world is not static and, therefore, our data cannot be static. It needs to be constantly updated and available for Mapbox developers to utilize when they want to build a BI dashboard, create a navigation app or customize the world for their audience. We want to expand our Boundaries data offerings to allow our users to consume more of our data to create their version of a living map and location service. This role will be focused on data engineering for feature expansion, improving coverage, increasing polygon precision and building pipelines to ingest new data sources.

• Integrate third party data sources from different geographic areas into our data pipelines
• Inspecting data using open source tools & making edits to properties & geometries
• Developing geographic data processing pipelines using scripting and command-line tools or common programming languages
• Interface with engineers from other teams to analyze their needs for geospatial data and solve their data problems
• Implement automated quality metrics to ensure we are continuously delivering high quality data to our customers
• Participating in design and code reviews
• Lead planning and execution of sprint projects
• Mentor other software developers to develop all aspects of their engineering skill sets

What We Believe are Important Traits for This Role

Technical Skills

• Expertise with GIS tools & processes, preferably open source ones such as QGIS, PostGIS, GDAL/OGR
• Working knowledge with SQL databases, & ideally experience writing custom functions eg with PL/PGSQL
• Working knowledge of JavaScript and/or Python
• Excellent debugging experience and performance profiling that includes running QA or test systems at scale
• Depth and breadth of AWS experience is ideal but not required
• Docker experience is a plus
• Node experience is a plus

Problem Solving Approach

• Empathy when it comes to listening and understanding complex problems and finding simple solutions
• Autonomy and ability to drive project completion in the face of ambiguity for the customer’s favor
• Ability and willingness pivot to new languages, skills, techniques quickly.
• Desire to share your expertise through documentation, mentorship, and both written and vocal discussion
• Openness to building internal tools to accelerate workflows 

Domain Knowledge

• Experience working with OSM and Wikidata data
• Cartography experience is a plus
• Knowledge of global boundary disputes is a plus

What We Value

In addition to our core values, which are not unique to this position and are necessary for Mapbox leaders:

• We value high-performing creative individuals who dig into problems and opportunities.
• We believe in individuals being their whole selves at work. We commit to this through supportive health care, parental leave, flexibility for the things that come up in life, and innovating on how we think about supporting our people.
• We emphasize an environment of teaching and learning to equip employees with the tools needed to be successful in their function and the company.
• We strongly believe in the value of growing a diverse team and encourage people of all backgrounds, genders, ethnicities, abilities, and sexual orientations to apply.

By applying for this position, you acknowledge that you have received the Mapbox Non-US Privacy Notice for applicants, which is linked here.  Completing this application requires you to provide personal data, such as your name and contact information, which is mandatory for Mapbox to process your application. 

Mapbox is an EEO Employer - Minority/Female/Veteran/Disabled/Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity