Python Engineer - Data Acquisition

Datenna is a fast-growing tech scale-up combining cutting-edge open-source intelligence (OSINT) and AI technologies to provide governments worldwide with critical insights into China’s techno-economic landscape. Our platform transforms OSINT into actionable insights on China’s Defense Industrial Base and broader technological ecosystem through advanced data processing and analysis.

The Role: As a Python Engineer – Data Acquisition, you will join our Data Acquisition team and play a key role in building and maintaining web scrapers that collect data from diverse online sources across China’s technology and industrial landscape. Your work directly feeds into our OSINT platform, transforming raw web content into clean, structured data that supports high-impact geopolitical intelligence.

Your Mission at Datenna:

• Build and maintain web scrapers for a wide variety of sources, including corporate registries, academic databases, and government portals

• Parse HTML, PDF, and other document formats into structured JSON outputs

• Navigate and adapt to anti-scraping measures such as proxies, browser automation, and request pattern controls

• Collaborate closely with data engineers to define output schemas that integrate seamlessly with downstream data pipelines

• Monitor scraper health, detect failures, and adapt quickly to changes in source websites

What makes you a great candidate:

• Solid Python skills. You write clean, readable code and are comfortable with common patterns

• Strong focus on code quality: writing tests, using type hints, applying best practices, and maintaining long-term maintainability

• Hands-on experience with scraping or web testing libraries such as Scrapy, BeautifulSoup, Playwright, Selenium, or similar tools

• Comfortable with HTTP fundamentals, including headers, cookies, sessions, and authentication flows

• Experience parsing messy, real-world data into structured formats

• Familiarity with XPath, CSS selectors, and regex for content extraction

• Proficient with Git and collaborative development workflows

• Enthusiastic about using AI tools to accelerate your work; including code assistants, agentic coding tools, or LLMs for research, workflow optimization, and problem-solving

Nice to have:

• Experience with Chinese-language web sources or proficiency in the Chinese language

• Experience with cloud platforms and containerization solutions

• SQL experience

Please know that applicants may be subject to a screening process.

AI is part of how we build

We use AI tools extensively to move faster and raise quality, and we focus our human attention on the work where judgment, creativity, and responsibility matter most. We expect every candidate to be comfortable using AI in their day-to-day work in a responsible manner and to continuously look for better ways to apply it.

Requirements

• Work on globally impactful projects in geopolitical intelligence

• Lead innovation in OSINT and AI technologies

• Competitive compensation and benefits

• Dynamic, international team environment

• Significant growth opportunities in a scale-up

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