Principal Data Engineer

Sleek

  • Singapore
  • Permanent
  • Full-time
  • 9 days ago
Job Description:Through proprietary software and AI, along with a focus on customer delight, Sleek makes the back-office easy for micro SMEs.We give Entrepreneurs time back to focus on what they love doing - growing their business and being with customers. With a surging number of Entrepreneurs globally, we are innovating in a highly lucrative space.We operate 3 business segments:Corporate Secretary: Automating the company incorporation, secretarial, filing, Nominee Director, mailroom and immigration processes via custom online robots and SleekSign. We are the market leaders in Singapore with ~5% market share of all new business incorporationsAccounting & Bookkeeping: Redefining what it means to do Accounting, Bookkeeping, Tax and Payroll thanks to our proprietary SleekBooks ledger, AI tools and exceptional customer serviceFinTech payments: Overcoming a key challenge for Entrepreneurs by offering digital banking services to new businessesSleek launched in 2017 and now has around 15,000 customers across our offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and the UK. We have around 500 staff with an intact startup mindset.We have recently raised Series B financing off the back of
70% compound annual growth in Revenue over the last 5 years. Sleek has been recognised by The Financial Times, The Straits Times, Forbes and LinkedIn as one of the fastest growing companies in Asia.Backed by world-class investors, we are on track to be one of the few cash flow positive, tech-enabled unicorns based out of Singapore.Requirements:We are looking for a Principal Data Engineer that is excited about the below Mission and Outcomes over the next 6-12 months.Mission:Work closely with cross-functional teams to translate our business vision into impactful data solutions. Drive the alignment of data architecture requirements with strategic goals, ensuring each solution not only meets analytical needs but also advances our core objectives. Be pivotal in bridging the gap between business insights and technical execution by tackling complex challenges in data integration, modeling, and security, and by setting the stage for exceptional data performance and insights. Shape the data roadmap, influence design decisions, and empower our team to deliver innovative, scalable, high-quality data solutions every day.Outcomes:1. Architecture & Design:
  • Define the overall greenfield data architecture (batch + streaming) using GCP - BigQuery..
  • Establish best practices for ingestion, transformation, data quality, and governance.
2. Data Ingestion & Processing:
  • Lead the design and implementation of ETL/ELT pipelines:
  • Ingestion: Datastream, Pub/Sub, Dataflow, Airbyte, Fivetran, Rivery
  • Storage & Compute: BigQuery, GCS
  • Transformations: dbt, Cloud Composer (Airflow), Dagster
  • Ensure data quality and reliability with dbt tests, Great Expectations/Soda, and monitoring.
3. Governance & Security:
  • Implement Dataplex & Data Catalog for metadata, lineage, and discoverability.
  • Define IAM policies, row/column-level security, DLP strategies, and compliance controls.
4. Monitoring, Observability & Reliability:
  • Define and enforce SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs for pipelines and data products.
  • Implement observability tooling:
  • Cloud-native: Cloud Monitoring, Logging, Error Reporting, Cloud Trace.
  • Third-party (nice-to-have): Monte Carlo, Datafold, Databand, Bigeye.
  • Build alerting and incident response playbooks for data failures and anomalies.
  • Ensure pipeline resilience (idempotency, retries, backfills, incremental loads).
  • Establish disaster recovery and high availability strategies (multi-region storage, backup/restore policies).
5. Analytics Enablement:
  • Partner with BI/analytics teams to deliver governed self-service through Looker, Looker Studio, and other tools.
  • Support squad-level data product ownership with clear contracts and SLAs.
6. Team Leadership
  • Mentor a small data engineering team; set coding, CI/CD, and operational standards.
  • Collaborate with squads, product managers, and leadership to deliver trusted data.
To do this you will have:
  • 10+ years experience in data engineering, architecture, or platform roles.
  • Strong expertise in GCP data stack: BigQuery, GCS, Dataplex, Data Catalog, Pub/Sub, Dataflow.
  • Hands-on experience building ETL/ELT pipelines with dbt + orchestration (Composer/Airflow/Dagster).
  • Deep knowledge of data modeling, warehousing, partitioning/clustering strategies.
  • Experience with monitoring, reliability engineering, and observability for data systems.
  • Familiarity with data governance, lineage, and security policies (IAM, DLP, encryption).
  • Strong SQL skills and solid knowledge of Python for data engineering.
Nice-to-Have
  • Experience with Snowflake, Databricks, AWS (Redshift, Glue, Athena), or Azure Synapse.
  • Knowledge of open-source catalogs (DataHub, Amundsen, OpenMetadata).
  • Background in streaming systems (Kafka, Kinesis, Flink, Beam).
  • Exposure to data observability tools (Monte Carlo, Bigeye, Datafold, Databand).
  • Prior work with Looker, Hex, or other BI/analytics tools.
  • Startup or scale-up experience (fast-moving, resource-constrained environments).
Behavioural fit is also important at Sleek, and we will be looking for candidates that have a proven track record of embodying the below attributes in their recent roles:Ownership: This shows reliability and helps build trust within the team. We move fast and need to know that everyone will see things through to completion and proactively help to get things back on track when challenges arise. Accountability is really important to us.Humility: There is so much we don't know. Humility allows for open-mindedness to feedback and a willingness to learn from others. It paves the way for collaboration and creates a positive work environment. It is a key ingredient of self awareness and emotional intelligence.Structured Thinking: Our business is complex with many layers (many services, many countries, many cultures). Regardless of whether you're more analytical or creative in nature, being able to show sound judgement is important to us. It ensures solutions are pragmatic and balance the needs of the organisation, team and customers.Attention to detail: You'll be managing multiple, complex workstreams from numerous stakeholders. It will be important for you to keep track of everything and notice when information is missing or inconsistent.Excellent listener and clear communicator: We have a variety of nationalities and for many people, English isn't their first language. For you to excel, you'll need to be present in your calls and make sure you properly receive and thoughtfully send messages to others in the business.About the interview processThe successful candidate will participate in the below interview stages (note that the order might be different to what you read below).We anticipate the process to last no more than 3 weeks from start to finish. Whether the interviews are held over video call or in person will depend on your location and the role.Case studyA ~60 minute technical chat with the Data Engineer, where they will give you some real-life challenges that this role faces, and will ask for your approach to solving them.Career deep diveA ~60 minute chat with the Hiring Manager + HoC. They'll discuss your last 1-2 roles to understand your experience in more detail.Behavioural fit assessmentA ~60 minute chat with our Head of HR or Head of Hiring, where they will dive into some of your recent work situations to understand how you think and work.Offer + reference interviewsWe'll make a non-binding offer verbally or over email, followed by a couple of short phone or video calls with references that you provide to us.Requirement for background screeningPlease be aware that Sleek is a regulated entity and as such is required to perform different levels of background checks on staff depending on their role.This may include using external vendors to verify the below:- Your education- Any criminal history- Any political exposure- Any bankruptcy or adverse credit historyWe will ask for your consent before conducting these checks. Depending on your role at Sleek, an adverse result on one of these checks may prohibit you from passing probation.By submitting a job application, you confirm that you have read and agree to our Data Privacy Statement for Candidates, found at sleek.com.Benefits:Some other great things about working at Sleek…Humility and kindness: Humility is a core attribute we hire for, which means we have a culture of not taking ourselves too seriously and being able to laugh. Kindness is also incredibly important. We are committed to creating and nurturing a diverse and inclusive environment.Flexibility: You'll be able to work from home 5 days per week. If you need to start early or start late to cater to your family or other needs, we don't mind, so long as you get your work done and proactively communicate. You can also work fully remote from anywhere in the world for 1 month each yearFinancial benefits: We pay competitive market salaries and provide staff with generous paid time off and holiday schedules. Certain staff at Sleek are also eligible for our employee share ownership plan and can share in the upside of our stellar growth trajectory as we work toward listing on a prominent stock exchange in the Asia Pacific region.Personal growth: You'll get a lot of responsibility and autonomy at Sleek - we move at a fast pace so you'll be making decisions, making mistakes and learning. There's also a range of internal and external facing training programmes we run. We're also at the forefront of utilising AI in our space and are developing a regional centre of AI excellence. It is our intention that if you leave Sleek, you leave as a more well-rounded person and professional.Sleek is also a proudly certified B Corp. Since we started our journey in 2017, we've been committed to building Sleek as a force for good. In just over 5 years, we've joined a community of industry leaders like Patagonia, Ben & Jerry's, and P&G who are building an inclusive, equitable, and a regenerative economy. We have planted over 29,271 trees to reforest our ecosystem and saved 7 tons of paper from landfills by processing over 1.4M pages through SleekSign. We aim to be Carbon Neutral by 2030.

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