Senior Data Engineer

This role can be based in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane with a hybrid working arrangement.

About Climate Friendly 

Acting to combat climate change is one of the world’s most pressing challenges. Climate Friendly was founded in 2003 as a profit-for-purpose business. Our growing team is passionate about active land management, and we are focused on finding economically viable solutions to maximise our impact on climate change. 

We are one of Australia’s largest and most experienced carbon farming project developers. This includes more than 190 projects with farmers, plantation managers, agribusiness, and Indigenous groups on carbon farming projects. 

The Opportunity

We are looking for a Senior Data Engineer to lead the delivery of scalable, high-quality data pipelines that support carbon, nature, and natural capital projects. This is a hands-on, technical leadership role where you will own pipeline delivery, shape data products, and support data-led decision-making across the business. 

About the Role 

The Senior Data Engineer is responsible for the end-to-end delivery of data pipelines as products, ensuring datasets are reliable, scalable, and aligned with business and product requirements. Acting as the data pipeline delivery lead and technical data product owner, you will translate stakeholder needs into actionable pipeline solutions while ensuring delivery meets expectations. 

You will own pipeline execution, planning, and coordination, including oversight of junior engineers, while ensuring alignment with platform standards defined by the Senior Geospatial Engineer. 

Key Responsibilities 

Data product and delivery ownership 

• Own the delivery of a portfolio of data pipelines as data products, including scope, sequencing, and outcomes 
• Translate product owner and stakeholder requirements into actionable pipeline deliverables 
• Ensure outputs meet expectations for usability, quality, performance, and completeness 

Pipeline design and implementation 

• Design, develop, test, and deploy scalable pipelines for complex spatial and non-spatial datasets within the data platform 
• Remain hands-on in development of complex or critical pipeline components 
• Make final technical decisions on pipeline architecture, performance optimisation, and data efficiency 

Reliability, failure handling and observability 

• Define and implement error handling and retry strategies 
• Implement logging, metrics, and alerting frameworks 
• Ensure pipelines are observable, supportable, and production-ready 

Data quality, metadata and governance 

• Lead implementation of data quality rules, validation frameworks, and automated monitoring 
• Own dataset metadata, schema documentation, and lineage records within the data catalogue 
• Ensure datasets comply with internal governance, privacy, and data management standards 

Operational excellence 

• Proactively monitor pipeline reliability, performance, and cost efficiency 
• Design and maintain alerting and remediation approaches for failed or degraded pipelines 
• Guide continuous improvement of CI/CD, testing practices, and operational practices 

Stakeholder engagement and collaboration 

• Work directly with product owners and business stakeholders to refine requirements 
• Communicate delivery progress, risks, and trade-offs clearly 
• Ensure alignment between delivered pipelines and business priorities 
• Collaborate with the Senior Geospatial Engineer and data consumers 

About You 

• 5+ years’ experience in data engineering, platform data, or analytics engineering roles 
• Proven experience owning delivery of production-grade data pipelines or data products in cloud environments 
• Strong proficiency in Python and SQL 
• Proven experience with Databricks (Spark), or similar distributed data frameworks in a geospatial context 
• Strong understanding of large-scale data processing and optimisation 
• Experience designing, operating, and improving data pipelines 
• Strong problem-solving and system design capability 
• Experience working with stakeholders to translate business needs into technical solutions 

Desirable 

• Experience with Azure data services and storage patterns 
• Exposure to data catalogue, lineage, or governance tooling 
• Experience supporting machine learning or advanced analytics 

Why Join Our Team?  We support wholeness, lifestyle and wellbeing whilst rewarding individual and collective performance. In addition to competitive salary our benefits include: 

• Work with purpose, contributing to a productive, sustainable land sector that contributes to a zero net emissions and nature positive Australia by 2050 
• A hybrid workplace – work to your own rhythm and balance connection and productivity 
• A supportive and inclusive environment that promotes diversity 
• 2 all staff events a year to connect with your friends and colleagues 
• Christmas holiday – 3 days of additional leave each year 
• Floating public holidays 
• Gender neutral paid parental leave 
• 2 days each year for training / development / study leave 

If this role sounds like a good fit, please submit your application, including a cover letter addressing the key selection criteria, by 19 June 2026. Applications will be reviewed as they are received, and the position may close earlier if a suitable candidate is identified.