Senior Software Engineer (Payflip Flex)

SENIOR DATA ENGINEER ABOUT KEYROCK Since our beginnings in 2017, we've grown to be a leading change-maker in the digital asset space, renowned for our partnerships and innovation. Today, we partner with over 250 team members around the world. Our diverse team hails from 42 nationalities, with backgrounds ranging from self-taught DeFi natives to PhDs. Predominantly remote, we have hubs in London, Brussels, and Singapore, and host regular online and offline hangouts to keep the crew tight. We are trading on more than 80 trading venues, and working with a wide array of asset issuers. As a well-established market maker, our distinctive expertise led us to expand rapidly. Today, our services span market making, options trading, high-frequency trading, OTC, and DeFi trading desks. But we’re more than a service provider. We’re an initiator. We're pioneers in adopting the Rust Development language for our algorithmic trading, and champions of its use in the industry. We support the growth of Web3 startups through our Accelerator Program. We upgrade ecosystems by injecting liquidity into promising DeFi, RWA, and NFT protocols. And we push the industry's progress with our research and governance initiatives. At Keyrock, we're not just envisioning the future of digital assets. We're actively building it. ABOUT THE TEAM AND WHY THE ROLE EXISTS The Central Data Team (CDT) is only a few months old, but data has been Keyrock's lifeblood since day one. We're now building the Keyrock Data Platform to give Keyrockers, and the AI agents working alongside them, the data and context they need to act fast and autonomously within agreed boundaries and aligned with our shared goals. Doing that means taking data from across the company and making sense of it in real time for all the functions that depend on it: trading desks, wealth and asset management, product, risk, finance, compliance, and research to name a few. You'd be one of the early hires in CDT and we expect you to contribute to most of the bigger decisions and build work. The standards we settle on and the way the team ends up working are still open. WHAT YOU’LL DO * Build streaming and batch pipelines that ingest, normalise, and distribute market, trading, and portfolio data, resilient to feed and exchange failures. * Build the self-serve tooling (SDKs, patterns, templates, AI agents) so other teams publish, consume, and build on data products without waiting on us. * Own data contracts and schema evolution. Keep schema changes from turning into multi-team coordination events. * Design the lakehouse and time-series layer around consumer query patterns. * Build and evolve the Data Governance and Data Quality Framework: stale-feed detection, schema validation, range checks, idempotent writes, lineage, ownership, self-healing. * Build the derived analytics the business runs on: cross-exchange spreads, VWAP at depth, order book microstructure for the desks; portfolio views, exposure, performance for wealth and asset management. * Make observability, cost, and performance first-class from day one. * Treat infrastructure as code (Docker, Terraform, CI/CD) alongside our Central Infrastructure Team. * Work in the open: write things down, partner closely with Architecture, Infrastructure, Platform, and the rest of the teams. WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR Tools matter less to us than how you think about problems. That said, here's the shape of the person we have in mind. Engineering Craft * 8+ years of building production data systems that other people rely on. * Strong proficiency in Python and SQL: not just being able to write a query, but being able to reason about what the engine is doing with it. * Code that's easy for someone else to read, test, and delete later. * Strong understanding of data modelling for both streaming and analytical workloads. * Efficiency, quality, idempotency, and observability are taken seriously by default. Systems Design * You've designed and operated streaming systems on Kafka, Redpanda, MSK, or Kinesis, and you have opinions about partitioning, consumer groups, offsets, and schema registries. * You've used a time-series store in production (ClickHouse ideally; TimescaleDB, QuestDB, or similar are fine too) and can talk about table design as a function of query patterns. * You've worked with a lakehouse architecture and reason about table layout, partitioning, and compaction as design choices that shape query performance and storage cost. * You build for self-healing and idempotency. Reprocessing is safe, retries don't double-write, and the system recovers without a human in the loop. Operational Readiness * Docker, Terraform, and CI/CD are how you work, not a separate "DevOps" thing. * You think about cost and performance early. * You instrument as you build: logs, metrics, and traces are part of the system from day one. * You design for data quality and governance up front covering contracts, validation, lineage, and ownership How You Think and Work * You reason from first principles when a problem is new, stay pragmatic when it isn't, and update your view when you learn more. * You treat the trading desks, wealth and asset management, product, risk, finance, compliance, and research as customers of what you build, and communicate with them that way. * You optimise for outcomes over output. A smaller, simpler thing that ships and works beats a bigger thing that doesn't. * You take ownership end-to-end: design, ship, operate, improve. * You say what you think including when it's an unpopular take. You change your mind when the argument is better. * You make the people around you better. Reviews are real, juniors grow from working with you, and peers want to work with you again. * You're curious about how markets work. Data engineering on its own won't keep you interested here. * You're honest about what you know and what you don't, and quick to close the gap. * You understand financial market data: order books, trades, reference data, portfolios, exposures. Crypto, TradFi, or both are a strong plus. NICE TO HAVE * Lakehouse experience with Apache Iceberg or Delta Lake. * Familiarity with DataHub or similar metadata/lineage platforms. * Rust. Some of our performance-critical services are written in it. Interest is welcome; fluency isn't required. WHAT YOU’LL GET * A from-scratch mandate. You'll be among the first hires in CDT, and the platform, the standards, and the team culture are yours to shape with us. * Strong partners. Close working relationships with Architecture, Infrastructure, Platform, and the desks themselves. You won't be building data in a vacuum. * Autonomy on how you work. Flexible hours, remote-first, business-hours on-call shared across the team. * A competitive salary package, with various benefits. * A team that likes each other. Regular online get-togethers and a yearly onsite where everyone's in the same room. OUR RECRUITMENT PROCESS We’re after those with the right skills and a conscious choice to join our field. The perfect fit? Someone who’s driven, collaborative, acts with ownership and delivers solid, scalable outcomes. As an employer we are committed to building a positive and collaborative work environment. We welcome employees of all backgrounds, and hire, reward and promote entirely based on merit and performance. Due to the nature of our business and external requirements, we perform background checks on all potential employees, passing which is a prerequisite to join Key

THE CHALLENGE Europe is entering a period of structural economic stress that demands a serious policy response. A second China shock — this time concentrated in advanced manufacturing, electric vehicles, and clean technology — is hollowing out the industrial base of Europe’s export-led economies and compressing the wage and employment gains on which social cohesion depends. Meanwhile, Europe’s technological dependence in digital infrastructure, energy systems, and defence — exposed sharply by a decade of geopolitical shocks — is no longer a strategic inconvenience but an economic liability. The answer strategic autonomy and innovation-led growth: building the industrial and technological ecosystems that generate productive, well-paid jobs at scale; reducing strategic vulnerabilities through sovereign capacity in digital, energy, and defence; and designing public investment frameworks smart enough to crowd in private capital rather than substitute for it. Growth is the fertile ground on which every other European challenge — energy transition, social cohesion, fiscal sustainability, geopolitical credibility — will ultimately be resolved or frustrated. EMPN’s industrial and innovation policy work sits at the heart of this challenge. We analyse the structural sources of European competitiveness, design efficient allocation mechanisms for strategic public investment, and develop proposals — legally grounded, fiscally credible, and politically feasible — to help Europe move from subsidy reflex to genuine industrial strategy. YOUR ROLE As Senior Industrial & Innovation Policy Analyst, you will be a central member of EMPN’s Brussels team, working closely with the Managing Director and EMPN’s network of partner institutes. You are expected to think hard about the structural forces reshaping European industry and innovation ecosystem, produce rigorous and accessible policy analysis, and translate research into proposals that can land with policymakers. Key responsibilities include: * Research: Lead and contribute to EMPN’s work on industrial transformation, innovation ecosystems, strategic autonomy, AI and labour markets, skills policy, and the design of public investment instruments. Engage seriously with the economic literature while keeping one eye firmly on policy applicability. * Content production: Write policy briefs, working papers, and shorter analytical pieces tailored to a senior policymaker audience. You are not a summariser of existing debates — you are expected to have a view, defend it, and explain what is wrong with the alternatives. * Network coordination: Work with EMPN partner institutes across the network to develop joint research and policy proposals on industrial and innovation policy. This includes shaping research priorities, organising workshops, and turning collective expertise into coherent output. * Advocacy: Engage with Commission officials, MEPs, national ministries, and industry stakeholders to increase the impact of EMPN’s work. Build relationships that turn good analysis into policy traction. YOUR PROFILE * We are looking for senior talent (5+ years of experience). You might be an economist with deep grounding in industrial or innovation policy; a policy practitioner who knows how the relevant legislative files move in practice; or someone from a development bank, financial institution, or industrial group who understands how strategic investment actually gets done. What matters is deep knowledge of the field, analytical rigour, policy judgement, and the standing to be taken seriously by senior policymakers. An advanced degree is expected and a PhD is an asset, but equivalent hands-on experience is valued just as highly. * You can write policy briefs that actually move people. You write with precision and confidence, producing texts that are analytically rigorous and immediately accessible to a non-specialist policymaker. You understand that your work is public and subject to scrutiny, and you hold yourself to that standard. * You think about feasibility, not just optimality. You are not content with technically correct proposals that no institution can adopt. You understand the legal, fiscal, and political constraints that shape what is achievable — and you design your proposals accordingly. * You are willing to advocate for your conclusions. You are prepared to defend your analysis in meetings with senior officials, at public events, and in the media, or you are actively building these skills. Intellectual confidence and intellectual honesty are equally non-negotiable. * You take ownership of your work. You work independently, follow questions to their end, and do not wait to be managed. The EMPN team and expert network are there to think with you, not to drive you. * You bring strong organisational skills and a solutions-focused mindset. You are flexible and constructive, with attention to detail and a genuine interest in building an institution as well as producing research. * You speak fluent English; French or German is a strong asset, and other European languages are welcome. WHY US? This is what we offer: * Contract: A permanent contract under Belgian law. 100%, or part-time negotiable. * Meaningful work: A chance to work on some of the defining economic questions of the decade – European industrial sovereignty, innovation-led growth, and the transition to a competitive, decarbonised economy – from the institution best placed to shape the policy response. * A growth opportunity: As EMPN’s Brussels headquarters expands, this role will offer increasing leadership potential. You will have access to personal and professional development opportunities, including skill-building, networking, and the chance to shape your role. It is an environment where your ideas can flourish, allowing you to grow into the best version of yourself. * Competitive salary: €65,000–€85,000 annual gross, depending on experience and skills, plus a benefits package. * Flexible work environment: Primarily based in Brussels with options for remote work. * Inspiring colleagues: Last but not least, you will join a fantastic team at our Brussels headquarters and Berlin team and work alongside inspiring partners across Europe’s capitals – Paris, The Hague, Rome, Helsinki, Stockholm, Vienna and soon Madrid and Warsaw. Expect meaningful work, exciting challenges, and plenty of fun along the way.