Data Engineer Tech Lead

This position is open
only to candidates who are legally residing in Poland
and can work with us through a registered business entity in Poland (e.g., sole proprietorship/JDG or limited liability company/sp. z o.o.).

As part of onboarding, we kindly ask new joiners to visit our Warsaw office on the first day for a short introduction, identity verification, and equipment pick-up.

Location:
Warsaw, Poland

Employment type:
B2B contract

Work model:
100% remote

Business travel:
Occasional, up to once per quarter (e.g., onboarding sessions or workshops)

Seniority level:
Tech Lead

About Us
Sanoma Learning is the leading European learning company, serving over 20 million students in 11 countries. We offer printed and digital learning materials as well as digital learning and teaching platforms for primary, secondary, and vocational education. The development of our methodologies is based on deep teacher and student insight and really understanding their needs. By combining our educational technologies and pedagogical expertise, we create learning products and services with the highest learning impact. In our Technology organization, you will join the largest cross-cultural community of Sanoma Learning and contribute to the digital transformation and future of education in Europe.

Project Description
Content as a Service (CaaS) is a strategic central capability that enables Sanoma Learning to efficiently scale and innovate its digital offerings. It provides a single, enterprise-grade service to ingest, enrich, and deliver all learning content and educational metadata – from both print and digital sources – for use in digital customer facing products and method creation.

Responsibilities
We are looking for a Data Engineer Tech Lead to join our team in a dual role that combines hands-on engineering with technical leadership.
You will actively design, build, and maintain our central data storage and processing layer while also providing architectural direction, technical ownership, and day‑to‑day guidance for a team of data engineers. This role suits someone who enjoys deep technical contribution and takes responsibility for setting standards, shaping the platform’s evolution, and enabling others to deliver high‑quality data solutions.

Hands-on / Individual Contributor Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain data pipelines to ensure reliable, scalable, and high-performance data flows.
• Work on the central storage layer, ensuring data availability, consistency, and security.
• Collaborate with data scientists, analysts, and software engineers to support data-driven initiatives.
• Implement and enforce best development practices in code quality, testing, monitoring, and deployment.
• Optimize data infrastructure for performance and cost-efficiency in AWS environments.
• Leverage AWS services such as S3, Glue, Lambda, DynamoDB, and Athena to manage and query data.
• Contribute to projects involving Generative AI (GenAI) by enabling data access, preparation, and integration with AI-driven solutions.
• Troubleshoot and resolve issues across the data pipeline and storage systems.

Tech Lead–specific Responsibilities

• Act as technical owner of the data engineering platform and its core components.
• Define and evolve the target architecture for data pipelines, storage, and processing layers.
• Provide technical leadership and day-to-day guidance to data engineers across multiple initiatives.
• Review designs and code to ensure alignment with architectural principles, scalability, and maintainability standards.
• Drive alignment on data engineering patterns, frameworks, and reusable components across teams.
• Balance delivery speed with long-term technical quality and platform sustainability.
• Partner with product, data science, and data governance stakeholders to translate business needs into technical solutions.
• Support technical planning, estimation, and dependency management for data engineering work.
• Mentor and coach engineers, supporting their technical growth and best-practice adoption.

Must-have Requirements
Hands-on / Individual Contributor requirements

• Proficiency in at least one programming language, preferably Python.
• Strong knowledge of AWS cloud services (S3, Glue, Lambda, DynamoDB, Athena, etc.).
• Solid understanding of databases (SQL and NoSQL), including schema design, optimization, and query performance.
• Hands-on experience with data processing pipelines (batch and/or streaming).
• Strong foundation in software engineering best practices, including version control, CI/CD, and automated testing.
• Experience with data modeling, storage formats, and ETL/ELT workflows.
• Familiarity with Generative AI technologies and how data engineering supports AI-driven applications.
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to work in a collaborative, agile environment.

Tech Lead–specific Requirements

• Proven experience designing data architectures and leading technical solutions end-to-end.
• Ability to make and communicate architectural decisions and trade-offs clearly.
• Experience leading or mentoring other engineers in a hands-on, pragmatic way.
• Strong ownership mindset with the ability to drive initiatives from concept to production.

Nice-to-have Requirements
Hands-on / Individual Contributor requirements

• Knowledge of data orchestration tools (Airflow, Step Functions, Prefect).
• Exposure to big data frameworks (Spark, Hadoop).
• Understanding of data governance and security best practices.
• Experience working with Content Management Systems (CMS) and content-centric data (e.g. articles, learning materials, metadata, versions, publishing workflows).
• Experience working with central or shared data platforms serving multiple teams or domains.
• Exposure to cost management and optimization strategies in cloud-based data platforms.

Tech Lead–specific Requirements

• Experience working as an Engineering Manager or in a people-management role, including supporting team development, performance, and delivery ownership.

What We Offer

• B2B contract for an indefinite period
• Work-life balance and a supportive, informal atmosphere
• Opportunity to shape the architecture and direction of a central data platform
• Technical leadership role with real ownership and decision-making impact
• Work on modern data platforms (cloud environments, AWS stack)
• Build and scale data solutions supporting AI-driven products in education
• Collaborate with Data Engineers, Data Scientists, Product teams, and AI Engineers
• Mentor and grow a team of data engineers in a hands-on environment
• Work in a flexible, result-oriented and collaborative setup