Data Engineer (Dutch required)

VIB (Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie) is an entrepreneurial non-profit research institute, with a clear focus on ground-breaking strategic basic research in life sciences and operates in close partnership with the universities in Flanders.

The ICT department at VIB ensures that assets, technology, information, and data are managed securely and efficiently. Our focus includes:

• Supporting and improving the ICT infrastructure, including networks, hardware, and critical systems.
• Enabling digital transformation initiatives across the organization.
• Securing and supporting applications, information and data flows, and software integrations.
• Helping researchers and support services work efficiently through modern, reliable digital services.

To strengthen our team, VIB headquarters in Ghent is looking for a Data Engineer who will help build and evolve the data foundations that enable reliable reporting, analytics and data-driven decision-making across the organization.

About the role

As a Data Engineer, you play a hands-on role in turning data from different business systems and sources into reliable, reusable and well-structured data solutions and data products that support reporting, analytics and other data-driven use cases across VIB. Working directly with data, pipelines, transformations, models and code, you build and implement robust and scalable data solutions as part of your day-to-day work.

The role spans the full data lifecycle, from understanding source data through data ingestion, transformation and modelling to making trusted data available for analytical consumption.

You take hands-on responsibility to the development, implementation and continuous improvement of the data solutions and data products delivered by the team. As part of a collaborative team, you build and improve these solutions while ensuring they are maintainable, testable, secure, observable and designed for reuse.

You work closely with business analysts, reporting specialists and application teams to understand both the technical characteristics and business context of data. Together, you help translate reporting, analytical and operational needs into sustainable data solutions rather than solutions built around individual reports or isolated use cases.

Reporting to the Data Analytics and Reporting Architect, you will contribute to the continued development of our data platform and engineering practices, including data quality, automation, governance and maintainability.

Our current data platform is built around Microsoft Fabric and related Microsoft technologies, while strong data engineering principles and the agility to evolve alongside changing technologies and business needs remain equally important.

Your responsibilities

As a Data Engineer, you will:

Engineering & building data solutions

• Develop and optimize scalable data pipelines and transformations across our institutional data platform.
• Build and maintain integrations that reliably bring data from different applications, systems and other sources into the data platform.
• Develop and implement data models for analytical consumption, applying appropriate data warehouse and lakehouse modelling principles.
• Build and maintain reusable data products that can support multiple reporting, analytical and other data-driven use cases across VIB.
• Write and maintain code where appropriate, while pragmatically using standard platform capabilities where these provide the most maintainable solution.
• Troubleshoot and resolve technical issues across pipelines, transformations and data products.

Quality and engineering

• Build data quality into solutions through appropriate validation, testing, monitoring and error handling.
• Ensure that data pipelines and products can be effectively monitored and that technical issues can be efficiently identified, investigated and resolved.
• Apply sound software and data engineering practices, including version control, automated deployment, testing, documentation and reusable components.
• Design and build solutions with performance, security and maintainability in mind.

Delivery & ownership

• Take hands-on ownership of the implementation and quality of data engineering solutions, from understanding source data and requirements to building, testing, deploying, monitoring and continuously improving reliable data solutions.
• Analyze technical challenges, propose practical solutions and implement them within the agreed technical and architectural principles.
• Continuously improve existing data solutions by applying simplification, standardization and sound engineering practices to increase quality and maintainability.

Collaboration & continuous improvement

• Collaborate with business analysts, reporting specialists and application teams to understand source data, business context and analytical requirements.
• Contribute your engineering perspective to discussions around data architecture, modelling, performance, security and governance, and translate agreed principles into working solutions.
• Share technical knowledge and experience with colleagues and contribute to common standards, reusable patterns and engineering best practices within the team.
• Keep up with relevant developments in data engineering and help assess where new technologies or approaches can create value for VIB.

Your profile

• You have several years of relevant professional experience in data engineering or a closely related technical data role.
• You have a bachelor’s or master’s degree, or equivalent through experience.
• You have a solid experience in designing and implementing data pipelines, transformations and data models.
• You have a solid understanding of modern data platform concepts, including data warehouses and/or lakehouses.
• You have strong SQL skills and are comfortable working with large and complex datasets.
• You have a good end-to-end understanding of data solutions and how different components work together.
• You are able to analyze technical challenges, propose practical solutions and take ownership of their implementation.
• You take a pragmatic approach to building solutions and understand the importance of maintainability and reuse.
• You enjoy collaborating with colleagues across technical and functional domains and are able to explain technical concepts clearly.
• You are comfortable working in an environment where technologies and practices continue to evolve.
• You are fluent in Dutch and English, both written and spoken.

Your skills and capabilities

Experience in one or more of the following areas is considered an asset:

• Modern cloud-based data platforms and their engineering capabilities, with hands-on experience with Microsoft Fabric considered a strong asset.
• Programming or scripting for data engineering, for example using Python or PySpark.
• Software engineering practices such as Git, CI/CD and automated testing.
• API-based and other application integration patterns.
• Semantic modelling and business intelligence platforms such as Power BI.
• Data quality, lineage and monitoring.
• Data governance and security principles in modern data platforms.

Our offer

• An open-ended contract.
• Competitive salary based on experience and expertise.
• A strong salary package with multiple benefits (e.g. internet allowance, meal vouchers, smartphone, hospitalization insurance, eco-cheques, group insurance, …).
• You will work within an innovative, challenging and international working environment in the large life-sciences network of VIB.
• We offer opportunities for personal development. Taking additional training and courses is certainly possible if relevant to the performance of the job.
• Our offices are located at VIB headquarters in Ghent. Possibility of homeworking (2 days/week), with balance between working from a remote location and from the office. We are flexible regarding work location and working hours.
• We are an organization that values diversity in backgrounds and in experiences. Diversity not only includes race and gender identity, but also nationality, age, disability status, sexual orientation, religion and many other parts of one’s identity. VIB is therefore looking for candidates who share a passion for science that generates an impact on society and care deeply about supporting each other's growth.

How to apply

If you are interested in this challenging and rewarding opportunity, please submit your application via the online application form (), including CV and letter of motivation.

In case of questions, please reach out to Voir email sur jobs.vib.be .

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