Data Engineer

Required minimum work experience: 4 years

FaceApp is a global innovator in portrait perfection - blending advanced neural network technology with ease of use. Our team has leading expertise in machine learning and mobile interfaces, and our goal is to make mobile photography readily accessible to all mobile users beyond those with artistic professional skills. Our mission is to create the best yet easy-to-use selfie and portrait editor. Our workplace is a creative environment for developing high-quality products. We are looking for like-minded people who are ready to join our friendly and passionate team.

FaceApp is the most popular selfie editing app and the top app with more than 1B+ downloads. It offers a fantastic set of highly photorealistic filters with “simple for you and complicated in the background” photo processing achieved via single taps. The app is available in 34 languages for free and as a subscription on iOS and Android devices.

We really appreciate our team and the relationships within it, and we hope that you, too, know how to build work in the key of a trusting and friendly atmosphere.

About the Opportunity

Join FaceApp as our founding Data Engineer and shape the data infrastructure that powers product decisions for one of the world’s most successful mobile applications. With over 1 billion installs globally, FaceApp has achieved remarkable scale while maintaining a focused, technically excellent team. This role offers the rare opportunity to build data engineering practices from the ground up at a company where every technical decision directly impacts millions of users worldwide.

The Impact You’ll Make

As FaceApp’s first dedicated Data Engineer, you will transform how our team leverages data to enhance user retention and maintain our position as the market’s premier ML-powered image editor. Your work will directly influence product decisions that affect millions of daily users and drive marketing strategies that fuel our continued growth. You’ll establish the foundation for data-driven decision making across the organization, creating systems that reveal insights about user behavior and measure the effectiveness of our growth initiatives.

This pioneering role offers exceptional autonomy to design and implement modern data infrastructure according to best practices, while working closely with our Analysts who currently handle data tasks alongside their primary responsibilities. Your technical leadership will establish standards and practices that will scale with our growing team.

Core Responsibilities

Building the Foundation

You will design and develop FaceApp’s first dedicated data engineering infrastructure using Dagster to orchestrate robust, scalable pipelines that process data from our global user base. Working with our ClickHouse OLAP database as the central analytical platform, you’ll build sophisticated data pipelines that ensure data quality and reliability while enabling new analytical capabilities. Your work will create the systems and processes that transform raw data into strategic insights, establishing patterns that will support our data needs as we continue to grow.

Enabling Data-Driven Decisions

Your systems will transform raw user interaction data into actionable insights for product development and marketing optimization. Working closely with our Analysts, you’ll build self-service data access tools that accelerate decision-making and reduce time-to-insight. You’ll develop automated reporting and monitoring systems that provide real-time visibility into user behavior patterns and campaign performance, directly contributing to our product evolution and revenue growth.

Technical Leadership and Standards

As the founding member of our data engineering discipline, you’ll establish best practices for a growing organization, including comprehensive documentation, code review processes, and architectural standards. You’ll maintain and enhance our technical documentation across internal services, product features, and our internal blog, ensuring knowledge is preserved and shared effectively. Your work will set the standard for data engineering excellence as we expand our team.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

You’ll work directly with our compact, highly technical team to understand data needs and deliver solutions that drive business value. This includes collaborating with engineering teams to ensure robust data collection at the source and partnering with analysts to design data models that support both current needs and future growth. Your ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear insights will be essential for enabling data-driven decisions across the organization.

Technical Requirements

Essential Skills

Strong proficiency in Python for building production-grade data pipelines and automation is fundamental to this role. You’ll need deep understanding of SQL and substantial experience with ClickHouse or similar OLAP databases for analytical workloads. Hands-on experience with Dagster or comparable orchestration frameworks is crucial, along with the ability to design workflows that scale gracefully. Expertise in AWS S3 and cloud-based data storage patterns for managing large-scale data assets rounds out the core technical requirements.

System Design and Architecture

You should possess a thorough understanding of data modeling principles and experience designing schemas for both transactional and analytical workloads. Knowledge of streaming and batch processing patterns is essential, with the ability to choose appropriate solutions for different use cases. Experience building data quality frameworks and monitoring systems to ensure pipeline reliability will be critical for maintaining the stability our users depend on.

Professional Qualities

We seek a self-directed problem solver who thrives with significant autonomy and minimal supervision. Strong technical curiosity and passion for exploring new technologies and approaches are essential, as is the ability to balance innovation with the stability required for production systems. Excellent communication skills to translate complex technical concepts for diverse stakeholders will ensure your insights drive meaningful action. Above all, we value commitment to building reliable systems that serve millions of users without interruption.

Nice to Have

Experience with mobile app analytics and user behavior tracking systems would be particularly valuable given our domain. Familiarity with machine learning data pipelines and infrastructure could prove useful as we continue to evolve our ML-powered features. Knowledge of fraud detection patterns and data analysis techniques would complement our existing analyst capabilities. Previous experience as a founding or early data team member in a high-growth environment would help you navigate the unique challenges of establishing data engineering practices from scratch.

Our Environment

FaceApp operates with the agility of a startup while serving users at global scale. Our technically-oriented team values deep expertise, thoughtful problem-solving, and sustainable engineering practices. We maintain a culture of kindness and stability, where individual contributors have significant autonomy to shape their areas of ownership. Our product leverages cutting-edge ML technology through GAN networks, creating unique data challenges and opportunities for analysis.

Our beautiful office in Limassol, Cyprus, sits on the Mediterranean seafront, providing an inspiring work environment for our core development team. During your initial period with FaceApp, we expect daily office attendance to ensure smooth onboarding and deep integration with our development team. Following this initial phase, we offer flexible remote work arrangements with regular office visits, typically once per week, to maintain strong team connections and collaborative culture. Daily team meetings at 10:00 AM Cyprus time ensure alignment while respecting individual work styles and preferences for those who prefer to start their day earlier.

Why This Role is Unique

This position offers an unparalleled opportunity to have foundational impact at a globally successful product company. Unlike traditional enterprise environments where engineers become specialized functions performing monotonous tasks, you’ll experience the full breadth of data engineering challenges while directly seeing how your work improves the product for millions of users. The combination of massive scale relative to our team size, lean structure, and technical autonomy creates an environment where exceptional engineers can truly shape the future of how FaceApp leverages data.

As our first data engineer, you’ll not only build systems but also define the role of data engineering within our organization, creating a legacy that will support FaceApp’s continued growth and innovation. The diverse technical challenges and direct impact on product success make this an ideal opportunity for engineers seeking meaningful work in a stable, technically excellent environment.

Why work at FaceApp?

• Above market wages, formal employment and white wages;
• Cozy office with sea view;
• Health insurance;
• Compensation of costs for professional literature;
• Sports compensation;
• Compensation for the purchase of a mobile phone (once a year, 50% of the cost is compensated);
• Flexible start of the working day;
• Relocation to Cyprus (Limassol) is required for this role;
• Comfortable working conditions, a positive atmosphere, an open, informal corporate culture, and a friendly team;
• An excellent opportunity, together with a professional team, to solve interesting and complex problems, to create a product that is used by millions of people.