Data Engineer (m/f/d)

ABOUT IVY

Ivy is building the world’s first programmable bank. We know the bank of the future is going to be fully regulated and stablecoin-native. We believe that the crypto folks are too afraid of full bank charters, while the bank folks know too little about crypto to pull it off. We believe there’s a trillion-dollar opportunity to launch regulated banks built on the blockchain.

Today, we bank the world’s leading crypto platforms (Kraken https://ffnews.com/newsarticle/paytech/kraken-partners-with-ivy-to-offer-instant-bank-payments/). Tomorrow, our platform will power global correspondent banking. And who's going to bank all these AI agents? We are certain that if we get this right, Ivy is going to be Europe’s first $1T company.

We are a team of ex-founders, early employees at unicorns, and top-tier talent from fintech and banking, and we are backed by the world’s best fintech investors:

• Valar https://www.valar.com/ - Peter Thiel and the Valar team have been thinking about global money since PayPal times.

• Creandum https://creandum.com/ - Previously invested in fintechs like Klarna, Trade Republic, Pleo, and iZettle

• 10+ unicorn founders

YOUR MISSION

You are the first data hire. You own everything - infrastructure, strategy, architecture - and you bring it from 0 to 1. There is no existing stack and no legacy decisions. You decide what great looks like and you build it.

You'll design and run the data foundation that the entire company relies on. Pipelines, warehouse, data models, analytics, real-time insights end to end. You make sure data is accurate, fast, and trustworthy for humans and agents alike.

You'll work across engineering, product, and business to shape how data moves. You build the primitives behind intelligent financial operations. You give the company the visibility to make hard calls with confidence.

TEAM MISSION

Ivy is building The Dark Bank - a bank run by agents. Our infrastructure team (DevOps, Security, Data) builds the foundation for that. We are a lean team of smart, high agency and high ambition individuals. You will work closely with the CTO, Lead DevOps and Head of Product. You are expected to move autonomously and you are by default trusted with all decisions you take.

YOUR FIRST SIX MONTHS AT IVY

In your first 6 months, you'll own the full arc from empty slate to production-grade data infrastructure:

Month 1-2: You embed yourself across the company. You talk to every team, map every data source, and understand how decisions are made today. You design the foundational data infrastructure that enables all aspects of how data needs to be used in the company. You implement the v0 of this infrastructure.

Month 3-4: Ingestion pipelines, core data models, and semantic layer are in place. Anyone in the company is enabled to query any data they want. You design the security framework for how humans and agents access data - fine-grained, auditable, regulator-ready.

Month 5-6: The company runs on the infrastructure you built. Every team embeds data into their daily work. Agents query data safely. You've built something that's easy to use and hard to break.

WHO WILL THRIVE IN THIS ROLE

We believe that throwing smart people with high agency at big problems produces the best outcomes. In the past, we have seen people succeed at Ivy with the following traits ranked by importance:

THIS JOB IS FOR YOU, IF

• You've been waiting for the chance to build a data stack from 0 to 1 and not inherit someone else's mess

• You get more energy from talking to people across the company than sitting alone at your computer

• You're excited about designing data access for AI agents, not just humans

• You want to work at a company where your infrastructure decisions directly shape the product

• You'd rather own the whole problem than have a narrow lane

THIS JOB IS NOT FOR YOU, IF

• You need a well-defined scope handed to you on day one

• You prefer working in isolation and shipping quietly

• You think "data engineer" means writing SQL and waiting for requirements

• You need a large team around you to be effective

• You're not comfortable working under banking-grade regulatory scrutiny

HARD REQUIREMENTS

• 3+ years building data infrastructure with tooling such as AWS/GCP/Azure, Snowflake/ClickHouse/Redshift, orchestration, pipelines

• Experience in a heavily regulated industry - banking, fintech, payments. You know what it means to build data systems under regulatory scrutiny

• Based in Berlin or willing to relocate - this is an in-person role. We build together

HIRING PROCESS

We have designed our process to make it as short and straightforward as possible:

Between each step, we send followups within 48h of the last step. We cover all travel costs for the on-site day. Our goal is to move from application to offer within 14 days, with feedback within 3 days of your final interview.

WHAT WE OFFER

• Join a Dream Team: We focus on building a team of exceptional people who grow fast, take on big challenges, and inspire each other to deliver at the highest level.

• No Bullshit: Output over input, bias for action - we move fast and follow through, customer value over internal policies. We believe in big outcomes, not titles or hierarchies.

• Real Participation: Employees are shareholders. Every permanent employee participates in our equity program.

• Perks & Benefits: Relocation support, Visa Support, the latest Apple gear (MacBook + AirPods), lunch benefit, Gym benefit, a beautiful office in the heart of the city, 4x on-/offsites per year, weekly team dinner, and an annual development budget.