Data Engineer

The Company: Fathom Data
Role Name: Data Engineer
Location: Remote (South Africa)
Join a values-driven team shaping modern data systems

About Us:
We’re a close-knit team of 10 working fully remotely. We mostly stick to standard South African office hours, but offer flexibility and autonomy wherever possible. You’ll be supported, challenged, and encouraged to grow.

At Fathom, we design and build high-performance data infrastructure, pipelines, APIs, and analytics tools that empower organisations to make faster, smarter decisions. Our work spans the full stack of modern data engineering. From ingesting and transforming raw data, to building internal tools, managing databases, and developing interactive Dashboards.

This role is well-suited to someone with a strong foundation in programming and system design who enjoys building end-to-end solutions. While experience with data platforms can be helpful, this is a hands-on engineering role focused on building and understanding data and systems, rather than primarily working with prebuilt tools. We're looking for someone who is comfortable working across different layers of a system and who takes pride in creating reliable, maintainable, and effective solutions.

We’re a small, fully remote team that values curiosity, accountability, and human connections just as much as technical excellence. We believe those values matter as much as technical skills when it comes to performing well in this role.

Role Summary:
We’re looking for a motivated individual with a strong foundation in programming and SQL, and experience working with modern data systems. You'll help design and build scalable pipelines, APIs, dashboards, and analytics infrastructure that support real-world decision-making.

But above all, we’re looking for someone who aligns with what we value:
- A love of learning and openness to new tools and technologies
- Initiative and self-motivation, someone who thrives when trusted to take the lead
- A strong sense of ownership and accountability, with a focus on outcomes as well as code
- Resilience in the face of uncertainty, and a willingness to tackle challenges directly
- Pride in producing high-quality work, with attention to detail and precision
- Clear and confident communication, especially in written and spoken English
- A proactive, positive presence that energises the team and builds a collaborative spirit
- A collaborative working style, someone who is comfortable with co-owning projects, open to constructive feedback and iterating with teammates to find the best solution

Skills & Experience:
- Strong programming skills in Python (preferred) or a similar object-oriented language (Java, C#, etc.) with an ability to learn new languages as needed
- Solid experience writing and optimising SQL queries in relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MSSQL, or similar)
- Comfortable working with Linux environments and command-line tools
- Experience with containerisation technologies such as Docker
- Knowledge of version control and continuous integration/deployment workflows (Git, CI/CD pipelines)
- Foundational understanding of web technologies including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
- Basic understanding of common data processing and analysis tools such as pandas, polars, or DuckDB
- Familiarity with data storage and processing concepts, including data lakes (e.g., S3, Azure Data Lake) and OLAP systems (e.g., Redshift, Snowflake)
- Basic understanding of common data formats such as CSV, JSON, and XML, with knowledge of columnar formats like Parquet, ORC, or Avro considered a bonus
- Basic understanding of distributed computing concepts, including data partitioning and parallel processing
- Awareness of infrastructure as code principles (e.g., Terraform) is a plus
- Experience working with cloud computing platforms such as AWS (preferred), Azure, or Google Cloud, including familiarity with services like object storage, virtual machines, container registries, and serverless computing