At Understory, we're not just developing software; we're revolutionizing how experiences are created, distributed and sold in a fast-growing ~$1.5T global market. 

Our platform is designed to unleash the full potential of the experiences industry, simplifying complexities and manual workflows, with a simple yet powerful software suite.

We are looking for a lead data engineer that can help us shape and build our data foundation, allowing us to process millions of bookings at rapid speed while also laying the foundational bricks for impactful industry-specific intelligence tools and machine learning models.

The Understory Stack

We've built Understory platform with a perspective of excellence and ambition.

To us, this means we've built the platform with scale in mind, but without overengineering it from the get-go. We keep our goals and ambitions in sight when we make decisions, but we're realistic of what we need to do, to also move fast. 

With this in mind, we've chosen to build Understory on a modern and proven stack:

• Everything is written in TypeScript, to allow all developers to read and understand all our code
• Frontends are built in React and Next.js, hosted on Vercel
• APIs and other backends are built using Node.js, running on AWS Lambda
• We've utilized an event-driven architecture in critical areas
• Fully automated CI/CD with GitHub Actions
• All infrastructure is hosted on AWS and managed using Terraform

What we're looking for

We're looking for a data engineer, who has a proven track record of designing, building and maintaining data pipelines and data warehouses. 

We believe our data will be a crucial part of the core product, and we want to 'do things right' when creating our data platform. 

This means, we're looking for a person, who's been an integral part of designing and implementing ETL processes and modern data warehouses in the past either in e-commerce or other B2B SaaS companies.

You are experienced with several technologies such as Postgres (SQL), MySQL, Snowflake, Databricks, dbt, AWS, Tableau, Looker and/or similar modern data stack components, and you are comfortable identifying the best fit for the specific business requirements. 
Experience with web analytics tools (such as Amplitude)or CRM tools (such as Hubspot) is a plus, but not a requirement.

We value personality more than fancy CVs, so if you're a person who agrees with our values, who is curious but focused, enjoys working hands-on focused on your craft while also considering the big picture, and last but not least, thrives in a social environment with equally ambitious colleagues, then you might be who we're looking for!

Your responsibilities

You'll be working directly in our newly established data & analytics team collaborating with the Understory product team. Over the course of the coming year, you'll be central driving force of:

• Giving technical input into making critical decisions in regards to the foundations of data at a fast-growing SaaS B2B startup in the experience industry
• Designing, implementing and maintaining our data warehouse and data pipelines
• Developing and maintaining ETL processes
• Ensuring the relevant data is available for both internal business intelligence and external use

Your responsibilities will include:

• Defining and documenting the Understory data platform and its requirements
• Continuously monitoring and maintaining data pipelinens
• Ensuring data quality and integrity meets the highest standards

How we work

We've all been through many different types of project management frameworks like Scrum, Waterfall, Kanban etc.

At Understory, we've adapted the Shape Up method developed by 37 Signals. The reason behind this is that it works very well in a small product-oriented team. But it also allows the developers to get creative with implementations instead of having a project manager running a 'dev factory'.

As Shape Up was made for a remote-first company, it also enables async communication, which we are true believers of. We don't want to spend time in meetings, which could have been a Slack message... However, we also know that sometimes when discussing complex subjects, having a 10 minute whiteboard session can accelerate the process, instead of going back and fourth in Slack threads.

We value focused and Deep Work, and it's not frowned upon to simply arrive at the office, put on the headset and get to work. But at the same time, we're all social people, and we know the strength of getting up and away from the screen, to have a chat about the projects, or just go for a walk to clear the air a bit.

We try and help out where we can, whether it's within our field or not; as we value different perspectives in our work and know how powerful it is, to get a different perspective on things.