Founding Data Engineer (Pricing/Comps)

Job description

**This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, which manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Founding Data Engineer (Pricing/Comps) based in Canada.** This is an opportunity to establish the data engineering foundation behind reliable pricing for an online marketplace. You will transform inconsistent, noisy sales-listing data from multiple sources into trustworthy comparable items and accurate price estimates. As a founding member of the data engineering function, you will design and own scalable ingestion pipelines, develop entity resolution systems, and build robust valuation logic. Your work will directly influence pricing accuracy, marketplace trust, and the quality of data-driven decisions. You will collaborate closely with computer vision specialists to improve item matching across sources with varying levels of detail. This role is ideal for an experienced data engineer who enjoys solving ambiguous problems, building production-grade systems from the ground up, and shaping data strategy in an early-stage environment. ### Accountabilities - Build, maintain, and own scalable, scheduled data ingestion pipelines that collect sold-listing information from multiple marketplaces and external sources. - Design and implement entity resolution systems that match inconsistent listing descriptions, text, and images to canonical items. - Develop pricing and valuation logic that accounts for listing recency, item condition, and the quantity and quality of comparable sales. - Establish production-grade data quality monitoring to identify data drift, fraud, anomalies, stale listings, and unreliable information. - Partner with the computer vision lead to define consistent item-matching standards across sources with different levels of detail and data quality. - Evaluate build-versus-buy decisions for data sources, licensing agreements, and third-party pricing feeds. - Communicate pricing confidence, data limitations, and uncertainty clearly to non-technical stakeholders while balancing accuracy, scalability, and practical business needs. ## Requirements - At least five years of data engineering experience, including ownership of large-scale, production ETL processes and data pipelines. - Experience handling messy, inconsistent, or adversarial data in marketplaces, pricing, fraud detection, or similarly complex data environments. - Strong SQL skills and hands-on experience with modern data engineering tools such as dbt, Airflow, Dagster, Spark, or comparable technologies. - Experience with statistical estimation and pricing models, including regression-based approaches to identifying comparable items and estimating value. - Demonstrated experience with entity resolution, record linkage at scale, and production data quality monitoring. - Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to make sound decisions when data is incomplete, ambiguous, or unreliable. - Excellent communication skills and the ability to explain pricing confidence, uncertainty, and technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders. - Familiarity with pricing intelligence, data licensing, or early-stage startup environments is a plus. ## Benefits - **Annual salary:** USD $160,000–$220,000. - **Work arrangement:** Remote position, with the original listing indicating eligibility in the United States and North America. Candidates based in Canada should confirm their location eligibility before applying. - **Employment type:** Full-time. - **Visa sponsorship:** Not available. - Additional benefits, including healthcare coverage, retirement plans, paid time off, and other perks, are not specified in the available job description and should be confirmed during the hiring process.