Data Engineer - Bot Protection

About Friendly Captcha: Friendly Captcha offers bot protection which is privacy-friendly and does not require the user to perform tasks such as clicking images of cars, making it accessible to all humans. We are a fully bootstrapped, profitable, growing business. Founded in 2020, we are a mission-driven business first, and a startup second. We don’t have the distracting goal of pleasing investors.

Our Vision: A safe internet accessible for all humans.

Our Mission: To build a better internet by providing privacy-first bot protection that respects user privacy and ensures accessibility for all.

What we offer:

• A place in a bootstrapped, mission-driven business. We get to design the business how we want it to be.
• A high-impact product that protects our customers’ internet presence, which is making the internet more human friendly. Together we have an impact we can be proud of.
• A small and effective team that is making a big difference by being focused. We prefer a small team that is great over a big team that is good.
• A place to grow personally and professionally.
• A testing ground to try and change things — we like to move fast and value iteration.
• A remote job where you can work either 4 or 5 days per week.

Role Overview: We’re looking for an engineer whose focus will be on using data to improve our bot detection and protection. Telling apart bots from genuine users is vital to our product. You’ll be working with large datasets to identify patterns and develop solutions that enhance our privacy-preserving CAPTCHA system.

Key Responsibilities:

• Conduct exploratory data analysis to understand bot behavior patterns and user interactions
• Develop and implement data-driven solutions to improve bot detection accuracy
• Translate analytical findings into actionable rules and models for production deployment
• Visualize large amounts of data using tools like Matplotlib, Seaborn, Mode, or Redash
• Work with our EU-owned stack including Clickhouse, Postgres, and Redis
• Collaborate with engineering and product teams to enhance our bot protection capabilities
• Maintain and optimize data pipelines for continuous improvement
• Document findings and methodologies for reproducibility and knowledge sharing

Requirements:

• Familiarity with multiple programming languages, primarily Go (with willingness to learn)
• Experience with Python data science stack (scipy, numpy, pandas) for data exploration
• Experience visualizing large amounts of data with tools such as Matplotlib, Seaborn, Mode, or Redash
• Experience in performing exploratory data analysis, diving into the data to find patterns
• Proficiency with Jupyter or Marimo for literate programming environments
• Ability to translate findings into actionable rules and models for production
• Preference for keeping things simple (if/else rules over complex neural networks)
• Familiarity with Linux command-line and Git version control
• Must be domiciled in the EU, EEA, UK or Switzerland
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills

Our Technology Stack:

• Backend: Go, TypeScript
• Database: Postgres, Clickhouse, Redis
• Data Science: Python (scipy, numpy, pandas), Matplotlib, Seaborn, Jupyter, Marimo
• Infrastructure: Terraform, OpenTelemetry
• Visualization: Mode, Redash

Work Environment:

• Fully remote across Europe with occasional in-person meetings
• Flexible work schedule (4 or 5 days per week)
• Focus on sustainable work-life balance
• Freedom to shape your work and time how you work best
• Emphasis on creativity, innovation, and iterative improvement

Why Join Us: This is an opportunity to work on a product that genuinely improves the internet experience for billions of users worldwide. You’ll be part of a small, impactful team where your contributions directly influence our mission to make the internet safer and more accessible for everyone. Our company culture values trust, autonomy, and continuous learning, giving you the freedom to grow professionally while making a meaningful contribution to society.