Lead Data Engineer at Meridia Land

About Meridia

Meridia is an AgTech company specialised in field data within complex smallholder-heavy agri-commodity supply chains such as cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber and soy.

Meridia Verify®, its flagship SaaS product, verifies supply chain field data in real time – and validates compliance with frameworks such as the EUDR (EU Deforestation Regulation). With Verify, companies can reduce commercial and reputational risk, minimise supply chain disruption and accelerate evidence-based decision-making for strategic sourcing, procurement and trade.

Meridia’s mission is to improve the veracity of datasets driving decision making in global agri-commodity supply chains. Its purpose is to build transparent and inclusive supply chains that afford smallholders a level playing field.

See https://www.meridia.land for more information on our work.

Job Description

As a Lead Data Engineer, you will serve as a senior technical expert responsible for architecting, implementing, and optimizing complex data engineering solutions while mentoring more  junior data engineers. You will lead the development of scalable data pipelines and infrastructure that power Meridia's SaaS products, ensuring high-quality data processing for global, multinational business customers.

You will be based in Indonesia and will work closely with our teams in The Netherlands, as well as with colleagues across Indonesia. You will report to the Data Manager in Indonesia.

Responsibilities

The Lead Data Engineer has the following areas of work and responsibilities: 

Technical Leadership

• Lead the design and implementation of robust, scalable ETL pipelines for geospatial data processing using technologies like Airflow, AWS, Google Cloud, and relational databases, and guide Data Engineering team on adoption and maintenance
• Architect data infrastructure solutions and data models for metadata to standardize large-scale geospatial datasets from multiple academic, government, and commercial sources into a consistent centralized data lake
• Accountable for driving technical decision-making for data engineering tools, frameworks, and best practices across the Data team while considering cost, resourcing, and effort for ongoing maintenance
• Ensure adherence to software engineering best practices and ProdEng Principles by Data Engineering team including code review, testing, documentation, version control, and repository management

Team Leadership

• Mentor and guide junior data engineers, providing technical guidance, ensuring the ProdEng principles are being followed and career development support
• Lead code reviews and ensure high standards of code quality, organization, and reproducibility
• Foster knowledge sharing within the team through technical presentations and documentation
• Collaborate with the Data Manager on resource allocation and project planning
• Act as a technical liaison between the data engineering team and other departments

Core Data Engineering Skills

• Expertise in building, optimizing, and maintaining scalable ETL/data pipelines, especially for large and complex geospatial datasets, using modern orchestration and workflow tools such as Apache Airflow.
• Proficient in cloud platforms (AWS, Google Cloud Platform), with hands-on experience architecting data storage, transformation, and metadata solutions in a secure and cost-effective manner.
• Strong SQL and data modeling skills, with experience designing relational and NoSQL databases to support data integrity, interoperability, and analytics use cases.
• Skilled in Python and relevant data engineering frameworks (e.g., Pandas, PySpark, DBT) for automating data ingestion, cleaning, standardization, and geospatial transformation.
• Solid understanding of data governance and best practices in version control (e.g., Git), documentation, data quality assurance, reproducibility, and collaboration in cross-functional data teams.

Domain knowledge and research

• Develop domain knowledge of relevant land cover datasets and guide GIS team on dataset creation using software and scripting tools
• Contribute to our (internal) data catalogues, manuals, dictionaries, glossary and broader set of terminology in a coherent way across countries, products and projects.
• Identify new opportunities for improvement, solve bottlenecks and tackle efficiency issues

Learning and Development

The ideal candidate should be eager and willing to learn and grow in the role. You will be engaged in on-the-job training and development to learn about the land rights sector and our data systems and workflows. You will be mentored by our Data & Methodology team in Indonesia and senior colleagues in Lithuania and the Netherlands.

Requirements

The ideal candidate has/is:

• 8+ years of experience in data and 5+ experience building data pipelines 
• Deep curiosity for solving real-world problems in agriculture, sustainability, and supply chain transparency, with a mission-driven mindset aligned with Meridia’s purpose.
• Strong analytical thinker with a strategic approach to designing efficient, scalable, and maintainable data solutions in resource-constrained environments.
• Excellent communicator and collaborator who can explain technical data concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders across cultures and disciplines.
• Agile and adaptable, able to quickly learn new technologies, frameworks, and evolving compliance requirements in a fast-paced SaaS environment.
• Integrity and accountability, consistently ensuring data privacy, security, and compliance with relevant legal and industry frameworks (such as EUDR).
• Proactive, accountable, and a reliable team player
• Full working proficiency in English

The following are an advantage:

• Familiarity with European Union Deforestation-free Regulation (EUDR) forestry and deforestation definitions
• Demonstrated projects or case studies involving forest monitoring or land-use analysis
• Start-up or scale up experience.

Benefits

The benefits package includes:

• Market rate salary commensurate with your skills and competencies

• Four-day work week
• A remote working position
• Being part of a fast-growing impact venture with an informal, professional work culture
• A laptop and an external monitor for your work
• Annual employee led Learning & Development budget
• Being part of a fast-growing impact venture with an informal, professional work culture
• Engaging with team members, clients and users in various other countries

The ideal starting date is August 2025. 

Please note that only applications submitted through Workable will be reviewed.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to jobs@meridia.land for more information about this position.