Senior Data Engineer

At Arkadium our purpose is to have fun while creating fun - and that’s exactly what we’ve been doing for 20 years. We’re the creators behind the world’s most-played games. From the Solitaire that came on your Windows machine, to hundreds of other games you’ve come to know and love - you can find our games on Arkadium.com, iOS, Android, and lots of other big sites worldwide.

As a proud Evergreen business our values of Fierce Drive, Positive Energy and Living Full Lives are the driving force behind how we run and the choices we make.

We’re privately held (aka stable and reasonable about growth), founder-led (aka passionate about our craft) and we consistently rank as a “Best Place to Work” (aka not your typical games company).

We’ve been recognised by "Happiness Works 2023, 2024, 2025" in Portugal, "Crain's Best Places to Work 2022" and "Great Place to Work 2022 and 2023" in New York!

Interested in becoming an Arkadian? We’d love to hear from you!

Overview

We are looking for a Senior Data Engineer to play a critical role in scaling and evolving our data infrastructure. This is a senior, hands-on position focused on building robust end-to-end data pipelines, optimizing costs, and helping redefine our data architecture to support massive scale. 

You will work closely with Analytics, Data Science, Engineering, and Product teams to ensure our data platform is reliable, performant, and financially sustainable. Beyond delivery, you will help set technical directions and best practices for how data is ingested, processed, stored, and consumed across the company. 

Work Location & Hybrid Model

We operate on a hybrid model that blends remote and in-office work, balancing flexibility with team collaboration.

Portugal (preferred): Candidates based in the Lisbon metropolitan area will be expected to work onsite one to three days per week, with specific days agreed upon with your manager. If you're based elsewhere in Portugal, a different onsite cadence will apply.

Other locations: We are also open to candidates based in Romania, Spain, or Italy, where we have existing team members. If hired from one of these locations, you will be onboarded as a contractor through our international payroll partner, Globalization Partners.

Please note that we are not able to offer relocation assistance or visa sponsorship for this position.

What You’ll Do

• Design, build, and maintain scalable, end-to-end data pipelines handling billions of events across web games and platforms 
• Lead the evolution of our data architecture, ensuring it supports growth, performance, and cost efficiency 
• Optimize existing infrastructure by identifying inefficiencies, reducing compute and storage costs, and introducing smarter data lifecycle management 
• Own data ingestion patterns (batch and streaming), ensuring reliability, observability, and data quality at scale 
• Partner with Analytics and Product teams to ensure data models and pipelines support fast, self-serve insights and experimentation 
• Evaluate and introduce new technologies and tools where they provide clear scalability or cost advantages 
• Establish engineering standards, documentation, and best practices for data engineering across the organization 
• Act as a technical mentor to other data engineers and contribute to raising the overall data engineering bar 

Requirements

What We’re Looking For

• 6+ years of experience in Data Engineering or Backend/Data Platform roles 
• Strong experience designing and operating large-scale data systems in production 
• Experience migrating data stacks to more cost-efficient architectures 
• Deep knowledge of modern data architectures (data lakes, lakehouses, warehouses, event-driven systems) 
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP) and a strong understanding of cost optimization strategies 
• Advanced SQL skills and strong proficiency in Python 
• Experience with Apache Airflow 
• Solid understanding of data modeling, partitioning, and performance tuning at scale 
• Ability to balance long-term architectural vision with pragmatic, incremental delivery 
• Strong communication skills and the ability to work cross-functionally with both technical and non-technical stakeholders 

Nice to Have

• Experience in gaming, ad-tech, or other high-volume event-driven environments 
• Familiarity with real-time analytics, experimentation platforms, or ML data pipelines 
• Experience owning or influencing platform-level data roadmaps 

Benefits

We offer:

• Competitive compensation with structured performance and career development check-ins
• Health insurance
• Additional budget for conferences you are interested in
• Personal development budget to fuel your passions and desire to learn (Arkadians are taking classes in not only Excel and leadership, but also interior design and even swimming!)
• Time off from Christmas Eve through New Year's Day so we can all enjoy the holidays
• A unique culture of transparency, true teamwork and fun
• Summer Fridays: Fridays off throughout the Summer to have more fun in the sun!