Senior / Lead Data Engineer

Location: Hong Kong, London

Time Type: Full time

Job Description

CoinDesk is the most trusted media, events, indices and data company for the global crypto economy. Since 2013, CoinDesk Media has led the story of the future of money and investing, illuminating the transformation in society and culture that comes with it. Our award-winning team of journalists delivers news and unparalleled insights that bring transparency, comprehension and context. CoinDesk Events gathers the global crypto, blockchain and Web3 communities at annual events such as Consensus, the world’s largest and longest-running crypto festival. CoinDesk Indices offers expertise in digital asset indices, data and research to educate and empower investors. For more information on CoinDesk media and events, please visit http://coindesk.com [coindesk.com] and for breaking headlines, data and indices visit http://coindeskmarkets.com [coindeskmarkets.com]

In November 2023, CoinDesk was acquired by the Bullish group, owner of Bullish, a regulated, digital assets exchange. For more information on Bullish, please visit https://bullish.com . CoinDesk operates as an independent subsidiary with an editorial committee to protect journalistic independence.

Reports to:

Engineering Organization & Culture

At Bullish, we are engineering the institutional standard for the digital asset industry. Our mission is to build a platform where security and compliance are the foundational core, requiring a commitment to technical excellence that goes beyond simply delivering code. We operate as a global engineering organization, setting a high bar in a demanding environment for those driven to do the best work of their careers alongside world-class peers.

We value engineers who treat development as a craft and own the outcome from concept to deployment. You will be expected to navigate the unknown, bring structure to ambiguity, and help shape the frameworks and processes that drive our global teams forward. We refuse to compromise on quality and seek problem solvers who thrive on high-impact technical challenges.

The Team: Data Engineering

The Data Platform team powers trading insights, compliance reporting, and Business Intelligence across the organisation.

The Role

A senior individual contributor who will own and evolve our Data Platform end-to-end — designing scalable pipelines, championing modelling standards, and driving architecture and tooling decisions. You’ll partner closely with our AI/ML team to ensure high-quality, well-governed data fuels intelligent products.

What You’ll Do

• Collaborate with stakeholders to decompose ambiguous problems into tested data solutions.

• Own our medallion architecture (bronze → silver → gold), ensuring quality at every layer.

• Develop dbt models, tests, and docs serving cross-functional stakeholders.

• Drive modelling decisions — dimensional models, snapshots, SCDs — across Exchange and Market Data.

• Design and maintain production data pipelines using Apache Airflow.

• Improve pipeline observability, alerting, and SLA monitoring; champion reliability practices.

• Mentor engineers via design reviews, pairing, and documentation.

• Evaluate new tools or patterns (streaming, real-time views) where they add value.

• Collaborate with the team’s AI specialists to deliver AI-driven Data Platform capabilities.

What You Bring

• 6+ years in Data Engineering, with 2+ years in a senior or lead capacity.

• Pragmatic problem-solver — you set direction, unblock others, and make trade-offs.

• Strong communicator — can whiteboard architecture and narrate data stories alike.

• Deep expertise in SQL, Python, and modern tooling (dbt, Airflow, BigQuery or equiv.).

• Strong data modelling fundamentals — you think in schemas, grain, and lineage first.

• Production GCP experience (BigQuery, GCS, GKE, IAM) or comparable cloud platforms.

• Solid grasp of Kubernetes concepts (pods, Helm charts, resource management).

Nice to Have

• Experience in crypto, digital assets, or exchange platforms — order books, market data.

• Familiarity with streaming frameworks (Kafka, Pub/Sub, Flink) and real-time patterns.

• Exposure to Data Governance or privacy frameworks in regulated finance.

• Experience building Conversational Analytics, RAG, or MCP-based AI tools.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

In an effort to attract, retain, develop and promote the most qualified individuals, CoinDesk is committed to treating all applicants and employees in a nondiscriminatory manner with respect to the terms and conditions of employment, without regard to race, color, religion or belief, sex, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status/service, physical or mental disability, or any other classification protected by applicable law. This mandate governs all aspects of employment, including recruitment, selection, promotion, training, education, social and recreation programs, compensation, discipline, termination and access to benefits.

ACCOMMODATION

CoinDesk is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation because of a disability for any part of the application process, please send an e-mail to [email protected] and let us know the nature of your request.