About PerPetum Energy
PerPetum Energy has spent almost two decades building the physical infrastructure of decarbonisation: close to 1 GW constructed since 2007, and today over 200 MWp of solar in operation across 47 sites in Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Germany, including two 40 MWp solar parks built over the car parks of Pairi Daiza zoo. Beyond solar PV, the company designs, builds, finances and operates full energy systems for industrial clients, spanning battery storage, e-mobility, onshore wind and power-to-heat, with no upfront capital investment required from the client.
That growth has outpaced the company's data. Generation, availability, revenue and pipeline each live in different systems, defined differently by different teams, and a chunk of the real work still runs through outside agencies. At 60 people and growing fast across four countries, that gap is now the constraint.
We're hiring one person to close it, from the ground up. You'll own data at PerPetum Energy: set the direction, build the platform, define the one number every team agrees on for each core metric, bring the work in-house, and hire the small team that will eventually stand alongside you.
You set the direction here and then build it yourself. There is no existing platform to inherit and no team to manage on day one. The first pipeline is yours to write.
What you'll do
In year one, you'll take PerPetum Energy from no real data platform to one lakehouse, one source of truth per metric, and the start of a team. Concretely:
- Own the data strategy. You write the multi-year roadmap, make the build, buy and insource calls, and answer to the leadership team for whether data ends up driving decisions or only describing them.
- Build the foundation from scratch. You own the full data life cycle, from ingestion and transformation to validation and delivery of trusted data products.
- Establish the single source of truth. You get every core metric (generation, availability, revenue, pipeline) to one agreed definition that every team uses, and make data quality something we measure rather than hope for.
- Bring the work in-house. You take control back from the external agencies in a planned, low-risk way, so the knowledge lives inside PerPetum Energy and we stop paying to rent our own data.
- Hire and lead a small team. Once the foundation is solid, you recruit around 2 strong data engineers over your first year and set the bar they work to.
- Partner with the business. You work directly with operations, finance, commercial and our AI Acceleration team so the platform serves real decisions, not vanity dashboards.
- Set the guardrails. You put in place governance, access control (Unity Catalog), documentation and lineage that hold up under scrutiny, so the company moves faster, not slower.
What we're looking for
- You have built data platforms yourself, taking a messy or greenfield environment and making it reliable.
- You are pragmatic. You ship something useful early and iterate, rather than designing the perfect platform for a year before anyone sees value.
- You can hire well and set a technical standard, but on day one, the team is you, and you're glad to stay close to the work as it grows rather than directing from a distance.
- You have owned build versus buy decisions before and defended them on commercial grounds, not only technical ones, and you are at ease as the data voice in a leadership meeting.
- You can talk to a plant operator and a CFO in the same afternoon and be understood by both.
- You hold a Master's or Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, (Data) Engineering or a related field, or bring equivalent hands-on experience, with 5+ years building and operating production data pipelines.
- Core stack: you're an expert in SQL, strong in Python, and fluent in medallion and dimensional modelling, with hands-on experience on Databricks (Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Workflows). Snowflake exposure is a plus. You're comfortable in an Azure environment, working with Entra ID and Key Vault.
- Quality and governance: you're familiar with data quality frameworks such as Great Expectations, CI/CD for data pipelines, and the basics of MLflow.
- You are fluent in English; Dutch or French is a strong asset.
- Experience with operational technology (OT), SCADA or asset telemetry, or a background in energy, utilities or renewables is a plus, as is experience replacing or reducing reliance on external development agencies.
Practicalities
- Belgium-based, with the flexibility to work from home. Or based in Germany, the Netherlands or France, and willing to travel to our office near Ghent at least once a month.
- Permanent, full-time.
- Reports to the CEO.
Our offer
You'll build something from zero, at a company where the infrastructure is real and the data function still has to be built to match it. You get real autonomy over strategy, tooling and architecture, end-to-end ownership of the data, a direct line to the CEO, and the first hire you make will be yours to choose. We offer competitive compensation, with additional benefits depending on your location.
Apply for this role
Send us your CV or your LinkedIn profile and we'll get back to you.