Geospatial Data Engineer

Tech Lead

Company

Orcrist builds the Orcrist Intelligence Platform (OIP), a secure, Kubernetes-native system delivering geospatial intelligence worldwide. Deployments run as SaaS and self-hosted/on-prem (air-gapped).

Role

Build and operate data pipelines that supply GEOINT services with accurate, compliant, and performant spatial data. Own ingestion, transformation, versioning, and distribution across cloud and air-gapped environments. Collaborate with Data Analytics Team in creating value adding data products.

What you'll do

• Develop ingestion pipelines using Python, GDAL, Rasterio, tippecanoe, and PostGIS for vector/raster/3D datasets
• Automate tiling, generalization, and 3D tile generation (Cesium 3D Tiles, quantized mesh, terrain) with incremental update workflows
• Implement data quality checks (topology validation, completeness, coordinate reference integrity) and provenance tracking (lineage metadata, checksums)
• Manage storage lifecycle across cloud (S3/GCS) and on-prem object stores; optimize performance and cost
• Package data for offline distribution (MBTiles, geopackages, zipped 3D tiles), including delta updates and secure transfer
• Collaborate with Data Acquisition and Licensing to enforce usage rights, export control, and compliance
• Monitor pipelines (Prometheus, Grafana), maintain runbooks, and participate in on-call/incident response
• Own end-to-end sourcing of new geospatial datasets (commercial and freely available)

About you

• 5+ years geospatial data engineering with large datasets and production ownership
• Delivered pipelines supporting map services, analytics, or offline distribution
• Worked under licensing/export constraints and documented compliance evidence
• Participated in on-call/incident response for data platforms

Nice‑to‑haves

• German language (B1+) and knowledge of European geospatial data providers (Copernicus, HERE, Airbus, Maxar)
• Experience with geospatial data engineering in a defence and intelligence environment
• Experience with vector tile optimizations, level-of-detail algorithms, or GPU-accelerated processing (cuSpatial)
• Familiarity with NiFi, Kafka, or streaming pipelines for geospatial events
• Contributions to open-source geospatial tools or data pipelines

What we offer

• Build the spatial data backbone powering Orcrist’s missions
• Work with modern geospatial stack: GDAL, tippecanoe, PostGIS, Maplibre GL JS/Deck.gl, Argo, Kubernetes. Bring your own ideas forward in modernising frameworks and tools
• Remote-first Germany, equipment and learning budgets, mission-driven impact
• Collaborate with data acquisition, product, and forward-deployed teams on real-world challenges