Data Engineer / Analytics Engineer (w/m/d)

About the job: You will be the first dedicated data hire at InCycling: a Berlin-based startup building AI-driven infrastructure for surplus chemical trading in a highly regulated industry. The data you'll work with is messy, incomplete, and arriving in every format imaginable, from structured ERP exports to blurry photos of warehouse labels. Your job will be to own it, understanding what matters, what’s wrong, and what’s missing, closely collaborating with the DS/ML owner. This role starts in Data Engineering but will grow with you toward data science and analytics as the platform scales. Tasks In this role you will: Build Python-based data pipelines on AWS, from early foundations to a robust maintainable system, to ingest, validate, transform, and analyze complex chemical data. Parse and extract structured data from messy sources: fragmented proprietary databases, PDFs, photos, free-form text. Understand why half the fields are blank, why the same chemical has 15 different names, and what to do about it. Develop domain understanding of our data. Help define our data infrastructure while it's still taking shape. The tools, patterns, and practices we establish now will stick around as the platform grows. Use AI tools (we use Claude Code) to structure and accelerate your work. Contribute to design discussions, code reviews, and retrospectives. We are a team of six, your opinions will matter. Requirements You should have experience or a good foundation in: Python and SQL for scripting and data manipulation (2–4 years of experience is ideal, but strong coursework and adjacent experiences may suffice); Data wrangling, validation, and cleansing (whether algorithmic rules- , or visualization-based); Strong analytical skills and a problem-solving mindset: you genuinely enjoy the challenge of turning messy data into working schemas and structures; Good engineering practices; version control, testing, linting, a care for code quality; Strong communication skills, kindness, di