Full Stack Data Engineer (AI + Real Estate SaaS)

Video from the founder: https://www.loom.com/share/88b1084c588e41cab08cdaf0de74fe5c?sid=80bb4da4-aff5-4c6c-9d53-91cb71a1da4e

Location: Colombo, Sri Lanka Type: Full-Time / Contract-to-Hire Start: Immediate

👋 About the Role:

We're building a lean but powerful AI-driven platform to help everyday property buyers make smart, data-backed decisions — a tool that scrapes live real estate listings, scores properties, and generates simple but insightful reports. You’ll be joining directly alongside the founder to architect and build the backend systems that power this experience.

You must be fluent in English, numbers, and Python — and have a deep curiosity about property data, scoring models, and how people make decisions.

This is a high-ownership, high-autonomy role where you will:

• Design the backend from scratch (MVP first, then scale)
• Work on everything from data pipelines and scoring logic to AI model integration and cloud deployment
• Collaborate directly with the founder (ex-agency owner, product strategist) to shape the product roadmap

🧠 Required Skills:

Data Engineering + Backend

• Strong Python (including pandas, numpy, scikit-learn)
• Scraping frameworks (e.g. Playwright, Selenium, Scrapy)
• API development (e.g. FastAPI, Flask)
• SQL and PostgreSQL (data modelling and performance)
• Basic Redis / Celery (queues + caching)

Data Science / ML Knowledge

• Basic statistical analysis (z-scores, normalisation, weighted scoring)
• Understanding of AI concepts (LLMs, embeddings, NLP)
• Ability to build and iterate on scoring models for property evaluation
• Familiarity with model evaluation (precision, recall, etc.)

Product Thinking

• Understand MVP vs Scale features
• Translate business goals (e.g. “what’s a good family home”) into logic models
• Think modularly – how do we plug in APIs, scoring formulas, AI summaries later?

DevOps / Deployment

• AWS (EC2, Lambda, Fargate)
• GitHub + CI/CD basics
• Containerisation (Docker)

✅ Nice to Have:

• Experience with Google Maps API or other geo-data tools
• Next.js / React (to support the front-end team if needed)
• Familiarity with Australian property market
• Experience building or contributing to SaaS products

🧑‍💼 What We're Looking For:

• Fluent English (spoken + written)
• Comfort working 1:1 with a fast-moving founder
• Bias for action — figure things out, unblock yourself
• Located in or around Colombo, Sri Lanka
• Long-term mindset — someone who could grow with the business

🎯 Sample Projects You'll Work On:

• Building a scraper that pulls listing + suburb data from REA and Domain
• Writing scoring formulas to compare properties (yield vs equity logic)
• Integrating Google Maps API to check distance from roads, freeways, and powerlines
• Generating AI-written summaries of properties for everyday users
• Creating a backend that can evolve from MVP to API-first SaaS

💼 Compensation:

Negotiable based on experience. Potential for long-term equity or performance incentives.

🚀 To Apply:

Send your resume and short answers to the following:

• What's a complex project you’ve built or contributed to?
• How would you calculate if a property is “good” for rental yield vs capital growth?
• Why do you want to work on this?