(This is a remote position with preference given to candidates residing in the continental United States.)

Who we are

Our mission is to become the trusted source of lifelong guidance for the next generation, helping millions of families find paths toward better life outcomes.

When students research and prepare for big life decisions such as college admissions, most are overwhelmingly relying on limited information gathered in an unsophisticated way. However, as with so many aspects of our lives, the latest technology and data techniques are changing what’s possible.

In the span of a few years, our team has made it possible for families to run their entire process for free in one place, sharpen their intuitions with ML-aided simulations or peer advice, interact with and be recruited by admissions officers from top schools in the US, learn from the best experts via free livestreams, or even purchase professional services to aid in their journey. Indeed, CollegeVine—our flagship brand targeting the high school to workforce transition—reached over 20 million families in 2021.

The vibrancy of our solutions is made possible by a platform strategy, which exposes our business model (and your career!) to upside from B2C, B2B, marketplace, network effects, and data advantages in a structured and sustainable way. So if solving a meaningful problem at a fast-growing and category-winning tech startup sounds like the next chapter of your career, then we can’t wait to meet you!

About the role

We’re looking for a Data Engineer to join our small data team and help scale our data platform. The ideal candidate will be comfortable working cross-functionally, building data pipelines, curating meaningful datasets, prototyping new solutions, and provisioning data for end-users.

What you'll do

• Build and maintain a data platform that powers product features, product analytics, business analytics, sales, and external insights reports
• Design and build an analytics warehouse to power our BI, ML, and more
• Help launch solutions for metadata tracking (data sources, release calendars, etc.) and data versioning
• Consult on data collection work and create API calls to ingest data from various free and paid education and career data sources
• Help figure out how to ingest data from various sources in a repeatable, quality-controlled way

Who we're looking for 

• A fast learner with natural curiosity: You have the ability to pick up new skills on the fly
• A resourceful problem-solver: You excel at identifying simple solutions to tough problems
• An optimist: You bring positive energy that other people draw upon
• A teammate with a point of view: You jump right in, get familiar with problems, and share your opinions

The job posting is for a senior data engineer, but we're open to a mid-level data engineer with a growth mindset, so don't hesitate to apply if that's you!

Skills you bring

• Experience with a commonly used language for data engineering, e.g. Python, Scala, etc.
• Knowledge of SQL (including query planning and optimizing, DDL, DML, etc.)
• Comfort with a workflow orchestration tool such as Airflow, Data Pipeline, Luigi, or Argo
• Experience with AWS tooling
• Comfort building ETL and ELT pipelines, ingesting and transforming data, and data warehousing and storage

It's an added bonus if you are ...

• Interested in doing data engineering work to support Machine Learning (e.g. anomaly detection)
• Familiar with tools like Kafka and Spark for streaming and large-scale processing
• Curious about MLOps
• Curious about interfacing with an engineering team that uses statically-typed functional programming/Haskell

The application process

Please submit your resume and a cover letter. Your cover letter should be short and explain your interest as well as any other qualifications not already reflected in your resume.

Candidates who move forward will have a 30 minute introductory call potentially followed by 2-3 hours of additional interviewing with various team members across the organization. All interviews can be scheduled flexibly — no need to do it in one large block if that doesn't work for you.

Hiring manager: Alyssa Siegmann, Head of Data Insights

Why you'll love working at CollegeVine

• Enjoy truly meaningful work: Spend your days working on something that's high impact and helps millions of students each year find amazing college matches.
• Iterate quickly and see the impact of your hard work: As part of small but growing organization that values speed and learning, you'll quickly be able to see how your work impacts the business and the families we serve.
• Work with a supportive team that appreciates you: You'll find that the teammates who you work with are appreciative and celebrate your ideas and innovations.
• Contribute to a mindful remote culture with real flexibility: We are proud of our remote culture and can't wait to talk to you about it. If you find a team you love that works on a mission you find meaningful, then why let caring for a loved one, moving cross-country, venturing abroad, or even living on a boat stop you?

Our current data stack

• Airflow for workflow orchestration
• AWS for compute and storage
  • Batch
  • ECR / ECS / EC2
  • Redshift
  • RDS (Postgres)
  • S3
• R for data science
• Heroku for hosting
• Domo (and some others) for BI

CollegeVine was founded in 2013 in Cambridge, MA and reaches over 10 million families annually who are in the high school-to-college or college-to-career phases. Our roots are in delivering near-peer mentorship at scale, which has since evolved to delivering lifelong guidance with a focus on data and technology. We have raised over $42m in venture funding from dedicated investors such as Morningside Technology Ventures (Xiaomi, TikTok), the founding partner of 5Y Capital, Fidelity, University Ventures, and more. In 2020, after years of being a remote-friendly company, CollegeVine became a fully remote company centered on Eastern Time with a diverse cast of team members based predominantly in the United States, but also around the world.