Data Engineer

The sustainable polymer technologies (SPOT) team aims to build a greener future where performance of sustainable materials exceeds current standards and limitations. In the context of the upscaling processes via pilot projects like Lignovalue and pillar, reactors for converting biomass waste streams into useful chemical intermediates and use these chemicals to convert into functional materials and polymers, we are looking for a data engineer to enable our researchers to valorize the operational data that is produced and define smart chemicals combining different properties (performance, sustainability, toxicity). Additionally, the person hired into this position will contribute to other data intensive projects and strive to increase the team's overall data maturity.

 Your responsibilities:

• Develop, deploy, monitor and maintain data pipelines for capturing, ingesting, transforming, and integrating data from various sources, following software engineering best practices.

• Collaborate closely with domain experts to understand their needs and learn the data domain to proactively identify opportunities.

• Build systems to monitor data quality and strive to continuously improve data quality at the source.

• Advocate for data management best practices and educate less technical members of the team

• Build customized data-oriented software solutions, automated reports, and dashboards, based on the needs of the team.

• Communicate and collaborate with stakeholders outside the team: the central IT teams, the Data & Analytics competence center, external collaborators, service centers, ...

• You have an applied bachelor's or academic master's degree in a technical or scientific field. Chemistry, informatics, and/or computer science are preferred.

• You have prior experience in a data-oriented role e.g., data analyst, data engineer, data scientist, ML engineer.

• You have extensive experience with Python, specifically the scientific Python stack (numpy, pandas, ...) and dataframe libraries like Polars. SQL and (Py)Spark experience is a strong plus.

• You have experience with Apache Airflow and creating DAGs.

• You have experience with the Git version control system.

• You have experience with containerization and deploying to production. Knowledge of Kubernetes is a plus.

• Familiarity with AWS or another cloud provider is a plus.

• You are communicative, flexible, and proactive.

• You are fluent in English. Also being able to speak Dutch is a plus.

Offer

• You will be part of a growing research organization with a strong international reputation, known for its cutting-edge technological research and scientific based advice.

• A competitive salary supplemented with various extra-legal benefits including allowances, insurances and a modular holiday package.

• Innovation is our most important asset, so it goes without saying that we give our employees the opportunity to learn and further develop themselves.

• We work ‘activity-based’ within VITO. Your activities determine your work location, with your home office as a possible work location (e.g. 1 day a week). Work location in case of physical presence is mainly in Mol.

• We highly value a good work-life balance and are open to supporting your specific needs in this regard.