---
title: 'Senior Data Engineer at Firstup'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-data-engineer-firstup-london-ssss4cdw12rj'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-17'
---

# Senior Data Engineer at Firstup

- **Company:** Firstup
- **Location:** London, United Kingdom
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-09-14
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-17
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/firstup/25679b95-047f-4473-845a-230e4ad7ad23

## Job description

## Who We Are

At Firstup, our mission is to improve the employee experience at every moment that matters, large and small. As the communication pipeline for the world's workforce, we now serve 40 of the Fortune 100 companies, reaching and connecting more than 17 million employees daily.

Our employees are experts in the employee experience, workforce communications and technology. Joining Firstup means joining a movement to make work better for every worker. As the world’s first intelligent communication platform, Firstup meaningfully engages employees at every moment from hire to retire, and delivers engagement insights to help companies support, promote and retain their talent. Our movement has taken root and is evident in our world-class customer base. Now we need your help. Ready to make a difference in the world?

The Senior Data Engineer will design and build reliable data solutions that translate complex product and business logic into scalable, well-tested data models and pipelines. This role requires deep expertise in SQL, query acceleration, and applying GenAI to both engineering workflows and data/analytics interfaces. They will partner across engineering, analytics, and business teams, contribute to shared codebases, improve data quality and observability, and help evolve the data architecture.

## Responsibilities

- Design, build, and maintain scalable data pipelines, warehouse models, and analytics solutions, balancing data quality, business value, and speed.

- Build and maintain natural language interfaces to data and analytics, applying GenAI/LLM techniques to make data more accessible across the business.

- Use GenAI coding tools and practices in daily development to improve code quality, testing, and delivery speed.

- Continuously evaluate new technologies that could improve and scale the team's data platform and technology stack.

- Establish and follow standards for SQL development, data modeling, testing, documentation, code reviews, and production support.

- Support production data pipelines through on-call rotation and incident response, partnering with engineering, analytics, and business teams.

- Document and maintain expertise in the technology stack and product domain, translating business needs into technical solutions with product management.

## Minimum Qualifications

- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent professional experience.

- 8+ years building reliable, high-performance, large-scale distributed systems, with an emphasis on streaming and data pipelines.

- Experience working with and maintaining multi-tenant SaaS experiences.

- Experience building natural language interfaces over data warehouses, including applying GenAI/LLM techniques to data and analytics.

- Enterprise-level experience with at least one large-scale analytical data warehouse or query engine: StarRocks, Amazon Redshift, Snowflake, Databricks, or Trino.

- Expertise writing, optimizing, and analyzing SQL.

- Hands-on experience building and operating distributed data platforms on AWS or GCP.

- Hands-on experience with streaming platforms such as Kafka and Spark.

- Experience scaling data modeling and warehousing.

- Proficiency in python.

## Preferred Qualifications

- Experience with Cube or other semantic layers.

- Experience with scheduling tools such as Airflow.

- Familiarity with the BI tool Metabase.

- Proficiency in Ruby on Rails, React, or other adjacent languages.

Why Firstup?

Because you care - about people, the work you do, and the connections you make. Work is such a large part of life; it only makes sense to make it awesome.

If you want to engage brilliant minds in a high-growth and inclusive environment where ideas are rewarded regardless of who they come from, join us. This is a rapidly changing space so if you thrive on ambiguity, are hungry for a challenge, and have the guts to speak your mind, you could be a perfect fit.

We offer an excellent PTO program, great health benefits, a casual and friendly environment, remote work, and a leadership team who truly believes in your growth – both personally and professionally.

Firstup is committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all applicants for employment and to all employees, without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, protected disability, veteran status, or any other protected status in accordance with applicable federal, state or local laws.

## #LI-TM1

#LI-Remote

## About Firstup

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Firstup provides an intelligent communication platform that helps large organizations engage, inform, and activate their workforce through personalized, multi-channel messaging.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series D; total funding $114.8M)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2008
- **Founders**: Greg Shove and Nicole Alvino

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Workforce communications and employee experience software
- **Target customers**: Large enterprises with deskless/frontline workers (healthcare, manufacturing, distribution, retail, aviation, etc.)
- **Mission/purpose**: "Empower organizations to put their people first" by cutting through communication noise and driving measurable business outcomes.

## Products & Services
- **[Firstup Intelligent Communication Platform](https://firstup.io)**: A unified SaaS platform that enables hyper-personalized employee journeys, automated campaigns, and real-time engagement analytics. Includes:
  - **Employee App**: Mobile-first communication for deskless workers.
  - **Employee Intranet**: Centralized personalized workspace.
  - **Employee Email**: Intelligent timing and targeting to break through inbox clutter.
  - **Digital Signage**: Targeted messages for break rooms and common areas.
- **Integrations**: Seamlessly connects with Microsoft, Workday, ServiceNow, and other HR/IT tools.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Annual revenue estimated at $100M (LinkedIn data)
- **Total Funding**: $114.8M across 6 rounds, including:
  - Series D (2016): $25M led by Akkadian Ventures
  - Series E (2018): $10M led by DTCP
  - Earlier rounds from Rembrandt Venture Partners and others
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Akkadian Ventures, Rembrandt Venture Partners, DTCP; integrations with Microsoft, Workday, ServiceNow
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Named a **Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Intranet Packaged Solutions**
  - Case study: Swissport unified 45,000 employees across 300 airports with 75% frontline engagement
  - Case study: Southern Company Gas saved 91K hours and $3.9M
  - LinkedIn followers grew **101.3% year-over-year** (37,672 followers as of late 2025)

## Competitive Advantages
- **AI-powered personalization**: Automates targeted, role-based communication across channels (mobile, email, intranet, signage).
- **Frontline-first focus**: Designed specifically for deskless and shift workers, a large underserved segment.
- **Proven ROI**: Forrester TEI study quantified improvements in frontline retention, productivity, and safety for a 10,000-employee organization.
- **Deep integrations**: Native connections with major enterprise platforms (Microsoft, Workday, ServiceNow) reduce friction.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI as a core differentiator**: "AI that works as hard as your workforce" – providing virtual assistants for employees, content creation tools for communicators, and analytics for leaders.
- **Expanding in healthcare, manufacturing, and retail** verticals where frontline communication is critical.
- **Continued international growth** (offices in London, presence across 8 countries).

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & values**: Emphasizes innovation, accountability, transparency, teamwork, and speed. "Be real" (fact-based, authentic feedback) and "operate with pace and urgency."
- **Remote/hybrid policy**: Mix of remote-first roles (e.g., UK-based Software Engineer) and hybrid roles (e.g., Chicago Sales Development Representative). Headquarters in San Francisco.
- **Benefits**: Paid volunteer days, donation matching program, and a focus on "community" both inside and outside the company.
- **Engineering environment**: Roles for fullstack, frontend, mobile UX, and cloud operations; uses AI tools in hiring process.
- **Headcount**: Approximately 194–300 employees (conflicting reports: LinkedIn shows 194 with -3.9% YoY decline; Wikipedia states 300). Distributed across 8 countries.

## Sources
1. [firstup.io](https://firstup.io)
2. [Firstup Careers](https://firstup.io/careers/)
3. [LinkedIn Company Page](https://www.linkedin.com/company/firstup-io)
4. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firstup)

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