Data engineer job description template

A data engineer

JD that is not generic.

One short, opinionated template. 280 words, not 1,800. Below: a side-by-side teardown of the typical job description and what to cut, the template ready to copy, and a one-click button to post it via Picked.

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The teardown

Side by side. Cut everything in red.

A typical JD · 1,847 words

scroll-killing

Data engineer (typical posting)

About us · cut

Founded in 2019, ACME Inc is a fast-growing, mission-driven, customer-obsessed scale-up empowering the modern hiring loop. We have been featured in TechCrunch, won several awards, and our culture has been recognised by Best Places to Work.

About the role · cut

You will be joining a passionate, collaborative team of self-starters in a dynamic, fast-paced environment. We are looking for a high-performing professional who is excited by ambiguity and ready to wear many hats.

Responsibilities · cut

- Collaborate with cross-functional partners to align stakeholders - Drive impact across the business - Champion excellence - Be a culture ambassador for the team - Wear many hats - Lots more bullets like this

Requirements · cut

- 5+ years of professional experience - Strong communication skills - Self-starter - Team player - Comfortable with ambiguity - Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Nice to haves · cut

- A laundry list of every tool anyone on the team has ever used - MBA / advanced degree - Previous experience at a high-growth startup

Benefits · cut most of this

- Competitive salary - Equity - Health, dental, vision - Unlimited PTO (which no-one takes) - Free snacks (in office) - Annual offsite - Pet-friendly office - Pinball machine

Picked template · 286 words

ships

Senior data engineer · London or remote

We are hiring our second data engineer. You will own the events pipeline end-to-end (currently: about 200 million rows a day from product, billing, and marketing sources). The team is three analysts and two engineers, and the warehouse is the contract every team trusts.

One paragraph, not six sections

Context. What the role owns. Team size. How you ship. Everything else is noise until the interview.

Skip the company overview

They found your JD. They can find your website. They will skim it. They will learn about you in the interview if they are still interested.

Bullets only where they earn their place

A list of "responsibilities" tells the candidate nothing they cannot guess.

Post the comp band

You will filter the wrong people anyway. Either pre-application or after offer. Pre is cheaper.

The template · plain text

Copy. Paste. Replace the bracketed bits.

Post with this · 30s

data-engineer.md

286 words · 3 min read

# [Senior/Mid/Junior] data engineer · [city] or remote

We are hiring our [Nth] data engineer. You will own the [X pipeline, currently about Y rows a day]. The team is [N] analysts and [N] engineers. [Who else writes models]. [How the warehouse is used]. [How the on-call rotation works].

## You will be good here if

- You have owned a pipeline in production past v1 and have backfill war stories you can describe with row counts.
- You treat the schema as the contract and can name a time you defended one under pressure.
- [The third trait you actually care about, with a sentence on the behaviour you want].

## What we use

[Warehouse, orchestrator, transformation tool, languages]. We will not retrain you on a stack, but we do not care if you came from [adjacent stack] as long as you can show us a contract you wrote.

## What you will not get

A dashboard backlog you never get to. A warehouse bill nobody owns. An analyst team that treats you as a ticket queue.

## Compensation

[Currency][low] to [high] base. [low] to [high] percent equity. We post the band because we mean it and we will not negotiate against ourselves.

## How we hire

30-second post, screen plus assessment via Picked, 20-minute interview via Picked, one on-site half-day with the team and an analyst. We aim to give a yes or no in 7 days.

## What is the rubric

Pipeline reliability, schema judgement, cost awareness, cross-team comms, honesty about edge cases. Not credentials.

That is the JD. Apply via [link], or just send a paragraph about the last pipeline you owned past launch and what broke first.

[Your name], [your title]

Tone rules

Eight phrases to delete
from every JD you ever write.

"Rockstar / ninja / wizard"

Nobody respectable applies to this. Replace with: nothing.

"Self-starter"

Means: we have no plan and no manager. Replace with: name the actual autonomy.

"Comfortable with ambiguity"

Same thing again. Replace with: tell them the specific ambiguity they will face.

"Fast-paced environment"

Means: chaotic. Replace with: name the cadence, sprints, ship-day, on-call.

"Champion"

A verb that means nothing. Replace with: the actual outcome.