Data Engineer

Location: This role is fully remote but must overlap with an East Africa timezone by at least 4 hours. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of employment Visas in the U.S. or U.K. at this time.

About this role

The mission of the Central Data team is to empower GiveDirectly with a rigorous, data-driven culture to maximize our efficiency, effectiveness, and scale of delivering dollars to recipients. Access to accurate, timely, actionable financial data is key to this mission but currently a pain point for the organization. As the seventh member of Central Data, you will collaborate with the Finance team to build, maintain, and improve data pipelines, tools, and dashboards to address this need. Additionally, you will work closely with the Senior Data Architect to maintain and enhance our current infrastructure (AWS, Databricks, Tableau) to ensure data accessibility for data scientists and analysts.

Reports to: Graham Tyler (Director of Data)

Level: Manager

Travel Requirement: Must be able to travel ~1-2 times per year to one of our countries of operation for team retreats or field visits

What you’ll do:

Success in this role is determined by meeting these key objectives:

• [30%] Build data pipelines and tools that reduce the time and risk associated with monthly financial reporting and other finance processes.
  • Reconciling data across accounts and systems is currently a time consuming, mostly manual process. You will combine data from multiple sources in Databricks and automate reconciliation tasks.
• [20%] Build datasets and dashboards that make financial data more transparent, actionable, and accurate.
  • Only top level financial metrics are currently available in dashboards. You will make detailed financial data easily accessible for decisions and analysis, as well as automate data quality tests to validate key financial metrics.
• [20%] Increase data available for analysis and ML models by ingesting new data sources.
  • Our data lakehouse does not currently include data from all internal data sources, such as our HR system. You will build pipelines to make this data available and useful.
• [30%] Increase speed of development, reduce infrastructure failures and cost.
  • On-call rotation duties: monitor pipeline jobs, review and test new pipeline PRs, track usage and cost.
  • Add new data quality checks and alerting.
  • Proactively identify and implement improvements to data infrastructure, as well as the tools used by data scientists and analysts to develop, deploy, and share their work.
  • Leave our systems and processes better than you found them.

What you’ll bring:

• Exceptional alignment with GiveDirectly Values and active demonstration of our core competencies: emotional intelligence, problem solving, project management, follow-through, and fostering inclusivity. We welcome and strongly encourage applications from candidates who have personal or professional experience in the low-income and/or historically marginalized communities that we serve.
• Language Requirement: English
• Language Preferences: No additional language preferences
• Critical thinking and analytical approach necessary to develop technical solutions that scale and are resilient to changes over time
• Entrepreneurial mindset and stakeholder management skills required to identify, design, and execute technical solutions that solve important, ambiguous organizational problems
• Python, SQL, and spark expertise, along with core competencies required to ship high quality data pipelines and data tools fast
• Extensive experience with Databricks preferred; experience with Tableau is a plus
• Intellectual humility, curiosity, and a commitment to being part of an exceptional team

Compensation

At GiveDirectly, we strive to pay our employees generously and equitably. We use an accredited third party salary aggregator to ensure that staff’s total compensation package (base compensation + bonus) falls within the 75th percentile of similar roles, at similar organizations. We also have a no negotiation policy to ensure we are paying staff equitably across roles.

• The United States base salary for this role is $130,000.
• The Kenya base salary for this role is $74,000.

This role is fully remote, so if you are not based in the US or Kenya, we will share an estimated salary benchmark for the country you are based in during the hiring process.

Why work at GiveDirectly?

At GiveDirectly, we work to ensure that you have everything you need to excel in your role and on your team, including:

• A positive and supportive team with opportunities for advancement
• A demonstrated commitment to helping all staff develop and grow
• A competitive salary, including bonus
• A robust health benefits plan (exact details will vary by country)
• Unlimited PTO (that we encourage staff to take!)
• Desk allowance and flexible work location