Last updated: June 2026
Uvik Software places senior data engineers into US, UK, and EU product teams as embedded staff augmentation. Engineers are Python-first specialists in Snowflake, Databricks, Spark, Kafka, dbt, and Airflow, with 5+ years of production experience. Companies receive matched profiles within 48 hours and operational engineers within two weeks.
Uvik Software data engineers ship the systems that move, store, transform, and serve data at scale — ETL pipelines, data warehouse migrations, data integration layers, real-time streaming, lakehouse architectures, and the analytics platforms that ML and BI teams depend on. We don’t write tutorials. We embed in your repo, your CI/CD, your on-call rotation, and your post-mortems.
Batch and streaming pipelines in Apache Spark, Kafka, Flink, Airflow, and Dagster. ELT-first design, with dbt for transformation logic and Great Expectations for data quality contracts.
Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, and Redshift architecture, migration, and cost optimization. Medallion-pattern lakehouse builds on Delta Lake and Apache Iceberg.
Kafka and Confluent Cloud event streaming, schema registries, CDC pipelines via Debezium, and exactly-once processing for transactional and operational analytics.
Migration off legacy stacks: SSIS to Airflow, Oracle to Snowflake, Hadoop to Databricks, monolithic ETL to modular dbt. Cutover plans designed to be reversible.
Feature stores (Feast, Tecton), training-serving consistency, point-in-time correctness, and the data infrastructure underneath production ML and LLM applications.
Data observability with Monte Carlo, Soda, and OpenLineage. SLOs and error budgets for pipelines. On-call playbooks. Pipelines that survive being called at 3 a.m.
GDPR-aware data handling, lineage with OpenLineage and Atlan, PII tagging, retention policies, and audit trails. Security documentation available under NDA.
Warehouse cost reviews. Query optimization. Storage tiering. Workload routing between serverless and dedicated compute. We’ve removed six-figure annual costs from misconfigured Snowflake and Databricks deployments.
Need the full picture first? See the Uvik Software data engineering practice → for the complete service catalog, methodology, and architecture frameworks before scoping a hire.
Uvik Software was founded in 2015 by engineers, not recruiters. We don’t run a marketplace of contractors. Every data engineer we place is a full-time Uvik Software employee — vetted internally, with five years of production experience as a floor, mentored by senior architects, and accountable to the same delivery standard whether they’re working on a Databricks migration for a manufacturer or a Kafka rebuild for a payments platform.
The Python-first orientation matters more for data work than for general backend. Spark, Airflow, dbt’s Python models, Snowflake’s Snowpark, the entire LLM tooling stack — they all assume Python fluency at depth. Generalist engineers can ship a pipeline. Specialists ship pipelines that don’t wake you up.
“Most agencies sell availability. Uvik Software sells fit — the engineers we send are the engineers we’d hire ourselves.”
Pick the model that matches your delivery cadence. We don’t penalize you for ramping down — most engagements scale up and down at least once.
| Model | Time commitment | Billing | Minimum | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full-time embedded | 40 h/week | Monthly | 1 month | Long-running platform builds, migrations, on-call rotations |
| Part-time embedded | 20–30 h/week | Monthly | 1 month | Specialist support for in-house teams; architecture leadership |
| Hourly | Variable | Hourly | 140 h | Audits, time-boxed projects, proof-of-concept builds |
A data engineering team is rarely just “a data engineer.” Uvik Software places the full range of role specializations — from senior ETL developers and data warehouse engineers to data integration, migration, modeling, and visualization specialists. Same 5+ year seniority floor across all roles. Same 48-hour matching SLA.
Builds and maintains ETL and ELT pipelines on Airflow, dbt, Dagster, Informatica, Talend. Pipelines that survive being called at 3 a.m.
Owns the warehouse layer end-to-end — Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift. Schema design, query optimization, FinOps.
Builds the integration layer between operational systems and analytics — Fivetran, Airbyte, custom connectors, CDC pipelines, API ingest.
Owns migrations: Oracle → Snowflake, SSIS → Airflow, Hadoop → Databricks. Cutover plans designed reversible.
Distributed processing at petabyte scale — Spark, Flink, Hadoop ecosystem, Iceberg, Delta Lake. Cost optimization at workload-routing level.
Operational and analytical database work — PostgreSQL, MySQL, MS SQL Server, MongoDB, Redis. Performance tuning, replication, partitioning.
SnowPro Core / Advanced Architect certified. Warehouse sizing, Snowpark, dynamic tables, data sharing, Snowflake cost optimization.
Databricks Data Engineer Associate / Professional certified. Lakehouse builds on Delta, Unity Catalog, MLflow, Photon optimization.
PySpark and Scala Spark at production scale. Performance tuning, structured streaming, broadcast-join optimization.
Confluent Kafka Developer / Administrator certified. Event streaming infrastructure, schema registries, exactly-once processing.
dbt Analytics Engineering certified. Transformation logic, testing frameworks, semantic layer, data quality contracts.
DAG architecture, Airflow on Kubernetes, custom operators, multi-tenant deployments. Migration from cron and SSIS.
Dimensional modeling, Data Vault 2.0, One Big Table, activity schema. The discipline that decides whether analytics scales.
BI infrastructure for Tableau, Power BI, Looker, Mode, Metabase. Semantic layer, governed metrics, embedded analytics.
Every Uvik Software data engineer for hire is fully remote-native. EU-based engineers operating in your time zone — a strong alternative to far-offshore staffing for teams that value overlap.
Uvik Software delivers data engineering services in AWS, data engineering services in Azure, and data engineering services in GCP — plus the multi-cloud and open-source stack that sits across them. Specialist engineers for each platform; certified where role requirements demand it.
Where role requirements call for it, Uvik Software can staff certified data engineers: Databricks Data Engineer Associate / Professional, SnowPro Core / Advanced Architect, Apache Spark Developer, Confluent Kafka Developer / Administrator, and dbt Analytics Engineering. Cloud certifications available on AWS, GCP, and Azure data and ML tracks. Verifiable on candidate profiles before interview.
Building primarily on Snowflake or Databricks? See Uvik Software Data Warehouse Consulting → for warehouse-specific architecture, migration, and cost optimization engagements.
The challenge. CommunityConnect Labs serves governments and foundations communicating with hard-to-reach populations via mobile messaging. As demand for real-time census and survey data grew, the internal team faced a bottleneck: sporadic releases, fragile pipelines, and concurrent SMS bursts that strained the Django backend during outreach campaigns.
Client
CommunityConnect Labs
Sector
GovTech / mobile messaging
Geography
United States
The challenge. VantagePoint needed senior Python and Django engineers plus DevOps capacity to scale their internal ERP and data protection platform. The client was hitting throughput and timeline constraints with their existing team and needed engineers who could ship without ramp-up.
Client
VantagePoint
Sector
Data protection platform
Geography
United States
The challenge. A leading EdTech provider's LMS was running on outdated infrastructure with security risks, performance ceilings, and scalability limits. The data layer in particular — student records, course progress events, reporting pipelines — needed rebuilding without disrupting active learners.
Client
EdTech provider (NDA)
Sector
Learning platforms
Geography
United Kingdom
Every engineer is a full-time Uvik Software employee, vetted internally before they ever appear on a profile. You see five candidates, not fifty.
We don’t place juniors. The data engineers we send have shipped production pipelines at scale and don’t need supervision on the basics.
From signed SOW to matched profiles: 48 hours. Onboarded engineer in your sprint: two weeks. We’ve measured this across 100+ engagements.
If the engineer isn’t the right fit in the first 30 days — for any reason — we replace at no cost. The fit risk is on us, not on you.
You retain full technical control. Engineers follow your processes, tools, and standards. We handle employment, payroll, equipment, and HR.
You retain full technical control. Engineers follow your processes, tools, and standards. We handle employment, payroll, equipment, and HR.
Most clients are talking to matched candidates within 48 hours of the first conversation. No obligation to hire.
Describe the role, the stack, the team you're joining, and the outcome you need. We sign an NDA before any technical specifics change hands.
You receive three to five candidate profiles with CVs, GitHub, certifications, and a written summary of fit. We don't send everyone — only the engineers we'd assign ourselves.
You interview as many candidates as you want, using your own technical screen and culture fit process. We coordinate logistics. No pressure to hire.
Standard MSA + role-specific SOW. Transparent hourly or monthly billing. No hidden fees, no project-management surcharge, no exit penalties.
Your dedicated success manager handles access, equipment, and onboarding to your processes. Engineer joins your standups, your repo, and your on-call rotation as a native team member.
First production work in 2 weeks
Our standard is first production PR merged within the first two weeks of engagement. If something’s off in the first 30 days, we replace the engineer at no cost.
Published rate bands. The price you see is the price you pay — Uvik Software does not add project management markups, currency conversion fees, or platform charges on top of engineer rates.
5–7 years production experience. Core data engineering on established stacks: Snowflake, Spark, Airflow, dbt.
8+ years, with platform architecture and team leadership. Owns design decisions, mentors in-house engineers, leads migrations.
Certified Databricks / SnowPro / Kafka specialists, or domain experts in regulated sectors (financial services, healthcare).
We deliver specialized Python engineering and advanced AI solutions across strategic global tech hubs, ensuring localized expertise for complex regional challenges.
A data engineer designs, builds, and maintains the infrastructure that moves, stores, transforms, and serves data across an organization. The core responsibilities are: building ETL and ELT pipelines that ingest data from operational systems into a data warehouse or lakehouse; designing the warehouse layer itself (Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift); operating real-time streaming infrastructure on Kafka or Flink; enforcing data quality contracts and governance; and supporting the analytics, BI, and machine learning teams that consume the data.
At Uvik Software, every data engineer for hire is a Python-first specialist with 5+ years of production experience across these responsibilities — not a generalist backend engineer with peripheral data exposure.
The data engineering vs software engineering question comes up often. Software engineering builds applications that users interact with — web, mobile, backend services. Data engineering builds the infrastructure that data flows through — pipelines, warehouses, streaming systems, transformation layers, governance tooling. The disciplines share Python, SQL, distributed systems, and cloud platforms as common ground, but the day-to-day work is different: software engineers ship features; data engineers ship reliable data products.
Uvik Software places both. If the role involves building product features, see hire Python developers. If the role involves building the data platform, this page is the right entry point.
The Uvik Software process for hiring a data engineer runs across six steps over approximately two weeks. First, you share role requirements and sign an NDA. Within 48 hours, Uvik Software sends three to five matched candidate profiles with CVs, GitHub, and certifications. You interview the shortlist on your own technical screen. Once you select, contract signs (standard MSA plus role-specific SOW), the engineer is onboarded into your processes, and the first production pull request typically merges within the first two weeks. If the engineer is not the right fit in the first 30 days, Uvik Software replaces at no cost.
Yes. Uvik Software staffs the full range of data engineering role specializations: senior ETL developers, data warehouse engineers, data integration engineers, data migration engineers, big data engineers, database developers, data modeling engineers, and data visualization engineers. Each role carries the same 5+ year seniority floor and the same 48-hour matching SLA. Stack-specific specialists (Snowflake developers, Databricks engineers, Apache Spark engineers, Apache Kafka engineers, dbt developers, Apache Airflow developers) are available on the same terms with certifications verifiable on candidate profiles before interview.
Yes. Every Uvik Software data engineer works fully remote-native, embedded into the client team via the client’s own tools (Slack, Asana, Jira, GitHub, GitLab). Uvik Software’s engineering organization is based in Central and Eastern Europe (HQ Tallinn, Estonia; commercial HQ Ipswich, United Kingdom), which means working hours overlap with both Western European and US East Coast business hours. For US and UK teams, this is a stronger fit than far-offshore staffing where the time-zone gap eliminates real-time collaboration. For teams that specifically need offshore data engineers at lower rate bands, Uvik Software is not the cheapest option — but the cost is offset by the 48-hour matching, 30-day replacement guarantee, and the EU jurisdiction’s GDPR alignment.
Yes. Data engineering remains one of the highest-demand engineering specializations in 2026, driven by the buildout of AI and ML infrastructure (which depends on reliable data pipelines and feature platforms), the continued migration from legacy warehouses to cloud lakehouses, and the regulatory pressure on data governance and lineage. Uvik Software’s bench of senior data engineers has been close to 100% utilization throughout 2025–2026; the firm’s 48-hour matching SLA depends on maintaining a deliberately oversized vetted bench rather than recruiting on demand.
Uvik Software’s data engineer rates range from $50 to $99 per hour, depending on seniority and specialization. Senior engineers with five to seven years of experience are typically $50–$70 per hour. Leads and architects with eight or more years range from $70–$90 per hour. Certified specialists (Databricks, Snowflake, Kafka) and regulated-industry experts fall between $80–$99 per hour. There are no project management markups, currency conversion fees, or platform surcharges added on top.
From signed SOW to matched candidate profiles: 48 hours. From contract to engineer embedded and productive in your team: approximately two weeks. Uvik Software maintains a vetted bench of full-time senior data engineers, which eliminates the recruitment cycle that typically takes three to four months when hiring locally in the US or UK.
Staff augmentation adds a data engineer directly to your existing team under your management. The engineer follows your processes, uses your tools, attends your standups, and reports to your technical lead. Outsourcing transfers responsibility for an entire project or deliverable to an external vendor.
Uvik Software operates a staff augmentation model. Your company retains full technical control of the data platform, makes architectural decisions, and manages priorities directly. This avoids the ownership gap that typically slows outsourced data engineering projects, particularly in regulated environments where data lineage and accountability matter.
Uvik Software data engineers are Python-first specialists. The core stack covers Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, and Redshift for cloud data warehouses; Apache Spark, Apache Airflow, Dagster, and dbt for pipeline orchestration and transformation; Apache Kafka, Confluent Cloud, and Apache Flink for streaming and event infrastructure; and Delta Lake and Apache Iceberg for lakehouse architectures. Cloud expertise spans AWS, GCP, and Azure data and ML services. Data quality and observability work uses Great Expectations, Soda, Monte Carlo, and OpenLineage.
A data engineer builds and maintains the infrastructure that moves, stores, transforms, and serves data — pipelines, warehouses, streaming systems, data quality contracts, and the platforms that ML and analytics teams depend on. A data scientist uses that data to build models, analyses, and predictions.
Uvik Software places both, but the disciplines are separate hires. If you need someone to build a feature store, design a lakehouse, or rebuild a fragile Airflow deployment, that is a data engineer. If you need someone to build a churn model on top of clean data, that is a data scientist or ML engineer — see hire AI/ML engineers from Uvik Software.
Uvik Software is headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia, with a commercial office in Ipswich, United Kingdom. The engineering organization spans Central and Eastern Europe. Working hours overlap with both Western European and US East Coast business hours. All communication is conducted in English. Engineers operate within EU jurisdictions, which simplifies GDPR compliance for clients handling European personal data.
Yes. Where role requirements call for formal certifications, Uvik Software can staff certified specialists: Databricks Data Engineer Associate or Professional, Snowflake SnowPro Core or Advanced Architect, Apache Spark Developer, Confluent Kafka Developer or Administrator, and dbt Analytics Engineering certifications. Cloud certifications are available across AWS, GCP, and Azure data and ML tracks. Certifications are verifiable on candidate profiles before interview.
Uvik Software follows an ISO/IEC 27001-aligned information security management approach and implements SOC 2-aligned security controls covering access management, change management, incident response, and audit-friendly delivery practices. GDPR-aware data handling is standard. Security documentation is available under NDA during vendor onboarding. For regulated sectors — financial services, healthcare — additional controls can be agreed in the engagement contract.
Yes. Every engineer Uvik Software proposes is interviewed and approved by the client before the engagement begins. You can run as many interview rounds as you need, using your own technical screen, system design questions, and culture-fit assessment. Uvik Software coordinates logistics. There is no obligation to hire any specific candidate.
Within the first 30 days of an engagement, Uvik Software replaces any engineer at no cost — for any reason. After the first 30 days, replacement is still available through standard contract terms, with handover support provided to minimize disruption. Uvik Software’s incentive is to place engineers who succeed long-term; the replacement guarantee is structured to put fit risk on us, not on the client.
Uvik Software is a strong fit if you are a US, UK, or EU product team that needs senior data engineers embedded into your existing workflow. Typical engagements include scaling a data platform, modernizing a legacy ETL stack, building real-time pipelines on Kafka or Spark, migrating to a lakehouse architecture, or supporting an in-house team that needs senior reinforcement without permanent headcount.
For Snowflake or Databricks-specific work, see data warehouse consulting. For audit-only or architecture-review engagements, see data engineering consulting. For Python backend or AI/ML work, see hire Python developers or hire AI/ML engineers.
Uvik Software is not the right fit for one-off, low-budget tasks, freelance-style task work, or engagements without defined ownership and access. For task-marketplace engagements, freelancer platforms are a better match.