Senior Data Engineer (all genders)

Permanent contract, Full or Part-Time, Remote or Cologne / Darmstadt / Düsseldorf / Berlin

Who we are

We are the tech powerhouse behind Kaufland’s international online marketplaces and a company within the Schwarz Group. Driven by a start-up mentality and working on an equal footing within flat hierarchies, we develop the best marketplace solutions for our customers, sellers and partners. #FromEuropeForEurope

Day by day, our Tech & Product Team of about 400 experts pursues the goal of creating the best possible customer shopping experience for our online marketplace. Through innovative technical developments, they not only create an outstanding shopping experience but also lay the foundation for an optimal selling experience for our sellers. Learn more about our division, areas, and cross-functional teams here!

Your tasks – this is what awaits you in detail

• You design, develop and maintain our streaming and CDC backbone (Apache Kafka, Debezium, Schema Registry, BigQuery Sinks) and our self-built workflow management platform Navarch, running on Kubernetes

• You drive architectural initiatives across the platform end-to-end — from idea to production — spanning streaming, orchestration, the warehouse and the observability layer that sits across them

• You operate and evolve our BigQuery multi-project setup, shaping access management, partitioning, slot strategy and cost-aware design patterns

• You shape how the platform supports domain analysts who ship their own pipelines — clear ownership boundaries, quality safeguards, and less hand-off friction between producers and the platform team

• You build and maintain observability across the data platform (Datadog, Slack-native alerting, cost dashboards) and you take care of our CI/CD pipelines on our self-hosted GitLab instance

• You shape how we manage BigQuery and Kafka cost at platform scale — FinOps is a live practice on this team, not a one-off

• You bring a senior perspective into architectural decisions across the platform — design reviews, merge-request reviews, and the multi-quarter initiatives the team runs

Your profile – this is what we expect from you

• You have several years of senior-level data-engineering experience, demonstrated by independent ownership of production systems — running on-call, shipping cross-component changes, and influencing architecture without process scaffolding around you
• You have strong problem-solving skills with a demonstrated ability to troubleshoot complex, cross-component issues (schema evolution, broker lag, query performance, cost anomalies)
• You have professional experience in software engineering using Python and you have a working command of SQL on top of cloud data warehouses — partitioning, clustering, query cost, idempotency
• Strong experience with object-oriented programming and software design patterns, applied to data engineering applications
• You have hands-on experience with at least four of the following technologies:

  • Message brokers, ideally Apache Kafka (broker operations, schema registry, KRaft)

  • Change data capture, ideally Debezium

  • Orchestration tools (in-house, Airflow, Dagster or similar)

  • Public Cloud Providers, ideally Google Cloud Platform

  • Container orchestration, ideally Kubernetes (Helm, operators, KEDA/VPA)

  • Infrastructure as Code, ideally Terraform and/or Ansible

  • Data modeling and transformation, ideally dbt or comparable

• You can articulate trade-offs in your past decisions — batch vs. stream, build vs. buy, latency vs. cost, isolation vs. coupling — with concrete numbers from your own work

• You thrive in a Kanban-style, low-process environment where seniors organise their own work and rotate triage weekly

• You are fluent in English (C1) and enjoy working in a dynamic, international environment

What we offer

• Create your own work-life balance: You have the flexibility to choose between working remotely (within Germany) or from one of our locations in Cologne, Darmstadt, Düsseldorf, or in Berlin!
• Do you want to move to Germany? No problem – we offer you an attractive relocation package to give you a smooth start. 
• Urban Sports Club and RSG Group Fitness Studios: Get top deals for fitness, swimming, yoga and more
• Mental Well-Being: We support you on your well-being journey with special offerings such as Instahelp, the digital platform for online psychological counseling
• Vacation & Sabbatical: Enjoy 30 days of vacation per year and the opportunity to take a sabbatical once you have been part of the team for a certain period!
• Option for Pluxee restaurant vouchers: Buy Pluxee vouchers through us and benefit from tax-advantaged meal allowances!
• ‘Deutschlandticket’: We subsidise your train season ticket for more mobility
• Employee Discount: You will receive a monthly coupon for Kaufland.de
• Free choice of operating system: MacOS or Ubuntu Linux, it's up to you
• Boost your growth: Benefit from our online language learning programs, diverse in-house training, and our automated 360-degree feedback. We cover the costs for relevant conferences, training opportunities, and approved team workshops to strengthen personal interactions
• This is who we are: Our dynamic culture combines flat hierarchies, a start-up mentality, an international team of over 65 nationalities, and the strength of the Schwarz Group to provide you an agile and secure working environment.
• We are team players: From day one, you will connect not only with your team but also with others through our digital onboarding journey, the buddy program, and regular team and company events, all-hands meetings, powerful mornings, and much more!

Check out our Principles & our blog for even more insights into our company culture!

Diversity at Kaufland e-commerce

We welcome applications from everyone, regardless of skin colour, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, ethnic origin, religion and ideology. We are signatories to the Charta der Vielfalt (German Diversity Charter) – because we know that extraordinary things can only be achieved with diversity. Read more here! When applying, you can optionally include your pronouns in your resume.

Why are you the perfect fit for this position?
Don't bother with cover letters - we're interested in facts and figures! Feel free to share your Github profile with us in your application.

As we have very international teams, we would highly appreciate it to receive your CV or profile link in English.

We are looking forward to your application!
Kaufland e-commerce Services GmbH & Co. KG
Postal address:
Habsburgerring 2
50674 Köln