---
title: 'Sr. Data Platform Engineer at Aarden AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/sr-data-platform-engineer-aarden-ai-seattle-azx039pme881'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Sr. Data Platform Engineer at Aarden AI

- **Company:** Aarden AI
- **Location:** Seattle, WA
- **Compensation:** $150k–$180k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-07-27
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/aarden-ai/am9icG9zdDpz1rE1yS6_k5Vf6_0wLGCC

## Job description

## About Us

Aarden is a land intelligence platform that helps landowners, investors, and developers figure out what a piece of land can actually be used for, and how to market it. We turn messy parcel, infrastructure, market, community, and ecological data into clear, bankable answers for land-dependent assets. Our goal is to become the default decision layer for land: helping physical projects start in places where they can be built and supported for decades.

We’ve built out a suite of data products to support that goal — pipelines, databases, and AI/ML models that power our maps and In-app agents. We have strong product-market fit, and we're now focused on augmenting our data systems. That’s where you come in.

## The role

We're looking for a Product-Focused data engineer to maintain and evolve our geospatial data pipeline. Our core data asset is a unique blend of property data, geospatial data, and AI-native derived data. Alongside advocating for data excellence, you’ll be empowered to opportunistically contribute to our user-facing product.

## What you’ll do

Pipeline modernization

- Continue our migration of pipeline orchestration to Prefect
- Own day-to-day operations of our data infrastructure
- Extend the pipeline to include new data sources and transformations
- Maintain, expand and optimize our postgres database and Iceberg datalake
- Create the 'connective tissue' for data at Aarden Cross-team integration
- Partner with product on new feature-driven datasets.
- Collaborate with the ML/analytics team to close the loop: anomaly detection → ticket → fix → validation → promotion to production
- Develop cross-team tooling/infra to keep GitHub, Notion, Linear, and Slack connected so pipeline issues, docs, and fixes stay linked Observability & AI-agent readiness
- Implement run-over-run data observability (row counts, key column distributions) to catch anomalies and bugs
- Expose accuracy/quality metrics as first-class artifacts so changes can be evaluated automatically, by a human or an agent
- Write and maintain AI-context documentation (schema docs, pipeline architecture, known patterns/quirks, "what not to do")

You might be a good fit if you… Must-have

- Have strong Python skills & are comfortable with PySpark or similar distributed data processing
- Have a strong sense of how the data you’re working with impacts the end-user
- Are curious and excited about AI and the impact it can have on our ways of working as developers
- Have experience with geospatial data (GeoParquet, PostGIS, Apache Sedona, or similar)
- Have worked with table formats like Apache Iceberg and lakehouse architectures
- Have worked on workflow orchestration (Prefect, Airflow, Dagster, or similar)
- Are comfortable working in a git-based, CI-friendly workflow Strongly preferred
- Have worked in full-stack environments, where your work can directly impact the application layer
- Have experience with Apache Sedona or other cloud spatial-compute platforms
- Have built observability/logging layers for data pipelines (not just app services)
- Have experience with property, parcel, real estate, or land data specifically

## Nice To have

- Have experience using AI agents to improve data architecture in a real production codebase
- Experience in real estate/land, energy, forestry, or agriculture tech

## Our Stack

Languages: Python and SQL. TypeScript/Node is a plus for our Application layer and AWS ingest paths. Orchestration & compute

- Prefect 3 for pipeline orchestration (YAML/config-driven flows, retries, logging)
- Coiled for elastic EC2 workers on GDAL-heavy and batch Python jobs
- Wherobots (managed Apache Sedona / PySpark) for large-scale spatial joins, parcel ingest, and lakehouse work Data lake & formats: Apache Iceberg, Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF (COG), and PMTiles. Queried with PySpark and DuckDB. Geospatial: GDAL, rasterio, GeoPandas, and tippecanoe. Large-scale spatial work runs on Sedona/Spark via Wherobots. Databases & serving: PostgreSQL + PostGIS (and pgvector on the app side) as the production store.

Working at Aarden Aarden is a high-trust, high-output team. We’re striving to be intentional about our team growth. This allows us to test the outer boundaries of our individual capabilities, while also going deeper on developer tooling and support. You’ll work hard here, and we’ve got your back. Practically, this means you’ll be asked to take on large projects, have a high bar of expectations to meet, and have a strong support system to help you meet that high bar. That support system includes:

- At least 2 in-person days per week at our office in Capitol Hill | We’ve found that while heads-down time at home is fantastic for task-related productivity, in-person time is magic for longer-form productivity. Our in-person days are used to plan, troubleshoot, and check-in with each other on progress and questions. Expect team lunches and whiteboarding.
- Focused ownership in your role | The rest of the team is here to help you and cares deeply about the long-term functionality of our applications. With that said, we’ll be looking to you to own your lane, go deep, and develop a strong stance on what it takes to make our applications best-in-class.
- Dedicated monthly AI tooling budget | We’re in a golden era of AI-powered developer tooling. We strongly encourage augmenting your output with AI tools, and have a dedicated & flexible budget for every team member to support that setup. We care about what you ship, not how.

## About Aarden AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Aarden provides AI-powered data and transaction infrastructure to modernize land investment, underwriting, and stewardship for institutional landowners, investors, and developers.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage)
- **Headquarters**: Seattle, Washington, United States
- **Founded**: Year not publicly specified; emerged from stealth in 2025
- **Founders**: Danan Margason (CEO), Ben Hudson (Technical Co-Founder & Head of Applied Science)

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Data Infrastructure & Analytics, Real Estate / Land Investment Technology (PropTech)
- Target customers: Institutional landowners, capital allocators (e.g., pension funds, endowments), renewable energy developers (solar, wind), data center developers, conservation groups, and project developers.
- Mission or purpose statement: To reimagine land stewardship for a new era, unlocking both economic and environmental value by bringing modern intelligence to land decisions.

## Products & Services
- **Aarden Platform (Decisioning Layer for Land Investment)**: An AI-driven SaaS platform that synthesizes parcel data, ownership records, land characteristics, conservation overlays, comparable sales, and operational metrics into a single, queryable model. It provides dynamic valuation analysis, scenario modeling, and investment guidance, compressing due diligence from weeks to hours.
- **Underwriting & Workflow Tools**: AI and agent-driven valuation and scenario analysis tools that help users assess risk, track portfolio trends, and identify hidden value across thousands of variables.
- **Execution Rails**: Standardized diligence packages and closing workflows designed to connect buyers, sellers, and service providers, bringing liquidity and transparency to the land asset class.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed.
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding of **$4 million** (Seed round, announced November 2025).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Led by **Planeteer Capital**, with participation from Founders Co-op, KDX, Superorganism, Stepchange, and Len Jordan (Madrona).
- **Growth Signals**: Strong early traction with a team of **7 employees** as of late 2025, representing **+700% YoY headcount growth**. The company is actively hiring across commercial, engineering, and research roles. The land asset class is experiencing explosive growth due to demand from solar, data centers, carbon credits, and conservation.

## Competitive Advantages
- **First-Mover in AI-Native Land Intelligence**: Aarden is building a new category by applying advanced AI (satellite imagery, policy data, market signals) to a traditionally offline and fragmented multi-trillion-dollar asset class.
- **Data Synthesis & Alignment**: The platform bridges the information gap between sophisticated developers and institutional landowners, creating transparency and alignment that speeds up transactions and unlocks fairer valuations.
- **Founding Team Expertise**: The team brings deep domain experience from companies like Zillow, Amazon, Carbon Direct, and Climate Neutral, combining strengths in geospatial data, marketplace design, climate, and AI.

## Strategic Focus
- **Data Expansion & Automation**: The company plans to use its $4M funding to expand data coverage across the US and deepen underwriting automation with AI.
- **Platform Growth**: Focused on bringing the platform to more capital allocators and project developers.
- **Category Creation**: Aiming to become the standard decisioning layer for land investment, moving the entire industry from fragmented, offline processes to a modern, transparent, and liquid market.

## Why Work Here
- **High Impact & Ownership**: As a small, fast-moving startup (7 people), every hire has outsized impact. Employees are directly involved in shaping a new category and defining how the world manages land.
- **Mission-Driven**: The company is committed to enabling positive environmental outcomes alongside economic returns, solving real problems in climate resilience, energy independence, and housing.
- **Culture & Perks**: Offers a culture of growth in a fast-paced, innovative environment. Benefits include competitive compensation, meaningful equity, health/dental/vision insurance, flexible PTO, hybrid work options, parental leave, and a commitment to investing in AI tools and employee growth.
- **Hybrid Work**: Open roles in Seattle are listed as either "In-person" or "Hybrid," indicating flexibility while valuing in-office collaboration.
- **Talent Pool**: The company is attracting talent from notable climate and tech firms like Carbon Direct, Root Geospatial, and Omnidian.

## Sources
1. [aarden.ai](https://www.aarden.ai/)
2. [aarden.ai/careers](https://www.aarden.ai/careers)
3. [aarden.ai/about-us](https://www.aarden.ai/about-us)
4. [aarden.ai (Funding Announcement)](https://www.aarden.ai/aarden-announcement)
5. [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/company/aarden-ai)

## Other roles at Aarden AI

- [Research & Insights Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/research-insights-lead-aarden-ai-seattle-6x8yy2gyrcm6) — Seattle, WA
- [General Interest](https://feeny.ai/job/general-interest-aarden-ai-seattle-hg63w2cqpmj5) — Seattle, WA