Lead Data Engineer

STARK is a new kind of defence technology company revolutionising the way autonomous systems are deployed across multiple domains. We design, develop and manufacture high performance unmanned systems that are software-defined, mass-scalable, and cost effective. This provides our operators with a decisive edge in highly contested environments.

We’re focused on delivering deployable, high-performance systems—not future promises. In a time of rising threats, STARK is bolstering the technological edge of NATO Allies and their Partners to deter aggression and defend Europe - today.

Your Mission

As the Lead Data Engineer you will own the full data lifecycle at Stark Defence across telemetry, testing, flight operations, qualification, and certification. Building a robust data function that turns raw system output into reliable, decision‑ready information for engineering, flight test, and program leadership.

Responsibilities

• Capture, ingest, and structure all telemetry and test data across air, ground, and simulation environments.
• Develop a standardized data pipeline covering test runs, flight runs, and qualification events.
• Build dashboards and analytical tools that give real‑time and historical visibility into system performance, regressions, and anomalies.
• Ensure data quality, traceability, and audit readiness for future qualification and certification work.
• Lead data strategy for long‑term fleet operations (scalability, streaming, storage, schema evolution).
• Partner with engineering teams to define metrics, interfaces, APIs, and data formats.
• Establish governance around secure handling of sensitive and export‑controlled data.
• Build and mentor a small data team over time (data engineering, analytics, possibly ML/controls interface).

Qualifications

• Strong background in data engineering, telemetry systems, or large‑scale data pipelines in aerospace, UAVs, robotics, or similar high‑complexity hardware environments.
• Deep experience with ingestion, ETL, and time‑series/streaming data (e.g., Kafka, InfluxDB, Parquet, S3‑based lakes).
• Experience building dashboards for engineering organizations (Grafana, Superset, internal tools).
• Understanding of flight test environments, avionics data formats, sensor fusion pipelines, PX4/Ardupilot or proprietary telemetry protocols.
• Ability to design data structures that support qualification and certification evidence.
• Strong systems and software fundamentals; ability to work hands‑on.
• Security‑minded; familiar with export control and defence‑sector data constraints (plus onboarding ability for our compliance stack).
• Proven leadership: builds processes, aligns stakeholders, drives execution.

If you are interested in building the future of European Defence with us, and you see yourself reflected on the description above, please send us your CV in English.