Data Engineer (Founding Role) - Skip

Skip is building the fastest, most intelligent home loan platform in Australia, powered by data. This is the company’s first dedicated data hire, tasked with transforming raw data into trusted, decision-ready insights and establishing a robust modeling discipline as the business scales.

About the Role

Skip seeks a founding generalist with a disciplined approach to modeling and strong business communication skills. This role is the owner of a function expected to grow, combining three key areas typically split across multiple roles:

• The ingestion layer: Design and maintain pipelines that reliably ingest raw data from source systems into Snowflake, ensuring downstream processes rely on complete, up-to-date data.
• The model layer: Transform raw Snowflake data into clean, reconciled, and business-ready tables using dbt-style methodologies (staging → intermediate → marts), with rigorous testing and documentation.
• The analysis: Partner with all teams and executives to answer critical business questions, turning data into actionable decisions. Success is measured by how many confident decisions are made based on trusted numbers.

The core principle is to make the trusted number the easy number—ensuring data-driven decisions are accessible and reliable.

The Opportunity

Skip is a high-talent-density team scaling with technology. The challenge is to prevent data from becoming a bottleneck as the company grows. This role aims to prove that a single, excellent data professional can provide trusted, self-serve answers while keeping the team lean.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the entire data stack, from ingesting raw data into Snowflake to creating clean, reconciled, and business-ready models for the entire company (loan book, arrears, originations, and acquisition funnel).
• Ensure data models are structured for trust, with the right grain, keys, and reconciliation capabilities. Implement testing and version control as defaults.
• Establish and own metric definitions and a data dictionary to ensure consistency across credit, finance, and executive reporting.
• Build core dashboards and reporting tools that the business actually uses, including board, warehouse-facility, and regulator-facing reports.
• Develop a single source of truth and governed self-service capabilities to support scaling without becoming a bottleneck.
• Collaborate with Growth, Credit, Operations, Finance, and Treasury to clarify ambiguous questions and provide concrete recommendations, not just charts.
• Leverage AI and technology to accelerate mechanical work while ensuring outputs are verified and honest.

What You Will Bring

Skip is looking for a senior-level candidate with autonomy and breadth, typically 5+ years of experience in analytics engineering, data analysis, or BI. Key requirements include:

• Ownership of a production data stack, including pipelines feeding the warehouse and a tested, documented, and version-controlled model layer (e.g., dbt).
• Strong business-facing analysis skills, with instincts for impactful insights, stakeholder management, and turning numbers into decisions.
• Focus on definitions and trust, prioritizing consistent modeling over ad-hoc patches.
• Deliberate use of AI, leveraging it for efficiency while verifying outputs to maintain accuracy.
• Clear communication of trade-offs, making pragmatic decisions about what is fit-for-stage versus over-engineered.

Skip values skills, approach, and adaptability over specific certifications or industry experience. A strong foundation in git and testing is non-negotiable.

Our Stack

Current tools include Fivetran for ingestion, Snowflake as the warehouse, and Hex for reporting. This is a starting point, and you will shape the stack as the role evolves.

Why Join Skip

• Build, don’t maintain: This is the first dedicated data hire, offering real founding ownership to define Skip’s data modeling, definitions, and trust frameworks from scratch.
• Own critical numbers: Influence how the entire company thinks by overseeing data from ingestion to board reporting, impacting credit, growth, finance, and executive decisions.
• Path to leadership: Start as a founding owner and grow into a data team leader or principal who sets industry standards.
• Competitive compensation and equity: Skip offers competitive pay and equity that reflects the role’s founding nature, with upside as the company scales.
• Work at the frontier of data and AI: Collaborate with an internal product and engineering team, leverage a modern stack (Fivetran, Snowflake, Hex), and use AI to streamline mechanical work while maintaining judgment.
• Serious impact: Skip is backed by leading venture funds and global credit partners, scaling rapidly. Your work helps Australians achieve homeownership sooner on a high-performing team.