Data Lead

The venture capital industry in Australia and New Zealand has been punching above its weight, producing some of the most innovative tech businesses in the world including Canva, Go1 and SafetyCulture. With a growing venture capital ecosystem comes the opportunity to innovate using data to ensure we remain at the cutting edge of what’s happening in the market and have the systems and tools internally to move fast and effectively. This role poses a unique opportunity to take an existing data infrastructure in a nascent discipline and become a driver for innovation in our venture ecosystem.

Airtree is a leading Venture Capital fund focused on the Australian and New Zealand markets. We have invested in some of the largest software companies to come out of the ANZ market to date and pride ourselves on being able to support exciting early stage companies with capital, expertise and data.

You will work closely with the investment, fund strategy, investor relations and finance teams to optimise and scale our existing data infrastructure, driving data-informed decision making across our venture capital operations. Your focus will be on enhancing our current Snowflake, AWS Lambda, and dbt ecosystem to further improve our origination process, portfolio reporting, and overall operational efficiency. This full-time, permanent position offers a unique opportunity to take our data initiatives to the next level in the dynamic world of venture capital.

What you'll do:

• Optimise and scale our existing Snowflake data warehouse, ensuring it continues to meet our growing data needs efficiently.
• Enhance and maintain our ETL/ELT pipelines built with dbt and AWS lambda functions, focusing on improving performance, reliability, and extensibility.
• Refine and expand our suite of AWS Lambda functions to support data processing and integration needs.
• Collaborate with investment partners and investment managers to evolve our data-driven tools, continuously improving our ability to surface promising investment opportunities.
• Lead the ongoing analysis and reporting of the Airtree portfolio companies, streamlining processes for more efficient, accurate and insightful quarterly reporting.
• Iterate on Airtree’s existing dashboards and insight packs (built with Streamlit), ensuring they continue to provide actionable insights as Airtree’s needs evolve.
• Proactively identify areas for improvement in our data models and infrastructure, implementing best practices and leveraging emerging technologies where appropriate.
• Champion data-driven decision-making across the organisation, helping stakeholders leverage our data assets more effectively.

Why this role is unique:

As our Data Lead, you'll have the opportunity to significantly influence Airtree’s data strategy by optimising and expanding our existing systems. You'll be working at the intersection of cutting-edge data engineering and venture capital, enhancing diverse projects that span from technical infrastructure to financial analysis. Your work will directly impact Airtree’s ability to identify promising startups and support the portfolio companies more effectively, making this role both technically challenging and strategically important to Airtree’s success.

Requirements

About you:

You're passionate about solving problems in eloquent and efficient ways. You thrive in fast-paced environments and are excited by the prospect of enhancing processes through data and automation. Above all, you are curious and obsess about ‘why’ things work the way they do.

We have a strong preference for candidates with proficient programming skills, particularly in Python, and advanced SQL knowledge (or a demonstrated ability to pick up new programming languages quickly). In addition, you may also have:

• Hands-on experience with or a strong interest in learning Snowflake, dbt, and AWS Lambda, with a focus on optimisation and scaling.
• An understanding of financial and investment concepts or a strong desire to deepen your knowledge of the VC industry.
• A track record of refining data models to balance performance, scalability, and usability in growing data environments.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• A talent for identifying bottlenecks in existing data systems and implementing effective solutions.
• A proactive approach to problem-solving and a commitment to continuous learning and improvement.

We're more interested in your ability to apply your data skills to drive business impact than in your familiarity with any specific tool. If you're excited about the challenge of taking an established data infrastructure to the next level and using it to inform investment decisions, even if some of the technologies are new to you, we want to hear from you.

Benefits

Location, Flexibility & Support

• Airtree’s office is based in Sydney, but our team enjoys a flexible (WFH days), supportive and family-friendly work environment.
  

We also offer:

• 5 weeks of leave: 4 weeks annual leave plus 1 bonus week of lifestyle and well-being leave
• 16 weeks paid parental leave
• A supportive return-to-work policy
• An annual budget for your training & self-development
• A range of health and wellness benefits including EAP, mental health first aid training, skin checks, flu vaccines and more…

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

• We celebrate and value diversity and are committed to being equitable and inclusive in the way we hire and in the way our team works together.

How to Apply

Please apply by 15 November 2024. From the initial submissions we'll select a small group of candidates for an interview and a short take-home case study. Finalists from that will be invited for in-person interviews with our team to talk through the case study.