At a Glance
- Tasks: Engineer data systems to combat financial crime and enhance operational reliability.
- Company: Join Ripjar, a leader in software and data products for fighting financial crime.
- Benefits: Competitive salary, 25 days leave plus your birthday off, remote work, and private healthcare.
- Other info: Dynamic team environment with excellent career growth and the latest tech tools.
- Why this job: Make a real impact by working with diverse datasets and cutting-edge technology.
- Qualifications: 2+ years in software engineering, fluency in Python or Node.js, and strong debugging skills.
The predicted salary is between 36000 - 60000 £ per year.
About Ripjar
Ripjar specialises in the development of software and data products that help governments and organisations combat serious financial crime. Our technology is used to identify criminal activity such as money laundering and terrorist financing, enabling organisations to enforce sanctions at scale to help combat rogue entities and state actors. Data infuses everything Ripjar does. We work with a wide variety of datasets of all scales, including an ever‑growing archive of billions of news articles covering most languages going back over 30 years, sanctions and watchlist data provided by governments, and vast organisation and ownership datasets.
About the Role
We see a Data Engineer as a software engineer who specialises in distributed data systems. You’ll join the Data Engineering team, whose prime responsibility is the development and operation of the Data Collection Hub, a platform that ingests data from many sources, processes/enriches it, and distributes it to multiple downstream systems. We’re looking for someone with 2+ years of industry experience building and operating production software who enjoys working across data pipelines, distributed systems, and operational reliability.
What you’ll do
- Engineer distributed ingestion services that reliably pull data from diverse sources, handle messy real‑world edge cases, and deliver clean, well‑structured outputs to multiple downstream products.
- Build high‑throughput processing components (batch and/or near‑real‑time) with a focus on performance, scalability, and predictable cost, using strong profiling and measurement practices.
- Design and evolve data contracts (schemas, validation rules, versioning, backward compatibility) so downstream teams can build with confidence.
- Own production quality: write maintainable code, strong unit/integration tests, and add the observability you need (metrics/logs/tracing) to diagnose issues quickly.
- Improve platform reliability by hardening pipelines against partial failures, retries, rate limits, data drift, and infrastructure issues—then codify those learnings into better tooling and guardrails.
- Contribute to CI/CD and developer experience: faster builds, better test signal, safer releases, and automated operational checks.
- Participate in design reviews, code reviews, incident retrospectives, and iterative delivery—making pragmatic trade‑offs and documenting them clearly.
Technology Stack
- Languages: Predominantly Python and Node.js
- Distributed/data platforms: HDFS, HBase, Spark, plus increasing use of Kubernetes and cloud services
- Storage/search: MongoDB, OpenSearch
- Orchestration: Airflow, Dagster, NiFi
- Tooling: GitHub, GitHub Actions, Rundeck, Jira, Confluence
- Deployment/config: Ansible (physical), Terraform / Argo CD / Helm (Kubernetes)
- Development environment: MacBook (typical)
Essential:
- 2+ years building and operating production software systems
- Fluency in at least one programming language (Python/Node.js a plus)
- Experience debugging moderately complex systems and improving reliability/performance
- Strong fundamentals: data structures, testing, version control, Linux basics
Nice to have:
- Spark/PySpark experience
- Hadoop ecosystem exposure (HDFS/HBase)
- Workflow orchestration (Airflow/Dagster/NiFi)
- Search/indexing (OpenSearch, MongoDB)
- Kubernetes and infrastructure‑as‑code
- Degree in Computer Science or numerical degree
Competitive salary DOE
25 days annual leave + your birthday off, in addition to bank holidays, rising to 30 days after 5 years of service.
Remote working
Private Family Healthcare.
35 hour working week.
Employee Assistance Programme.
Company contributions to your pension.
Pension salary sacrifice.
Enhanced maternity/paternity pay.
The latest tech including a top of the range MacBook Pro.
Data Engineer in Cheltenham employer: Ripjar Ltd
Ripjar Ltd is an excellent employer, offering a dynamic work culture that fosters innovation and collaboration. With a focus on employee growth, we provide ample opportunities for professional development and the flexibility of remote work, complemented by the option to engage with our vibrant office in Cheltenham. Join us to be part of a forward-thinking team that values your contributions and supports your career aspirations in the fast-paced financial services sector.
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We think this is how you could land Data Engineer in Cheltenham
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We think you need these skills to ace Data Engineer in Cheltenham
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show Off Your Projects:In the world of data science, your projects can speak volumes about your skills. Make sure to showcase a few key projects in your CV or portfolio, especially those that highlight your ability to work with data sets, build models, or use relevant tools like Python, R, or SQL. Don’t forget to include links to any GitHub repositories if applicable!
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How to prepare for a job interview at Ripjar Ltd
✨Brush Up on Your Statistics
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✨Prepare for Case Studies
Expect to encounter real-world case studies during the interview. We might be asked how we’d approach a data problem or analyse a dataset to extract insights. It's essential to think out loud and demonstrate our problem-solving process so that the interviewer can see our logical thinking in action.
