Careers

Locations

Paris, FR, Onsite/Remote

Job Term

Full-Time

ABOUT DESCARTES UNDERWRITING

Descartes was born out of the conviction that climate change calls for a revolutionary approach in insurance to better protect corporations, governments, and vulnerable communities. We offer a new generation of parametric insurance that builds resilience against the full spectrum of climate and emerging risks. Utilizing Machine Learning and real-time monitoring from satellite imagery & IoT, our state-of-the-art climate tech provides innovative coverage for all trade sectors, in all regions of the world. After a successful Series B raise of $120M USD, Descartes Underwriting is proud to be recognized among the French Tech Next40. With a growing corporate client base (150+ and counting) - our diverse team operates out of our global offices headquartered in Paris and based in Singapore, Sydney, New York, Denver, Atlanta, London, and soon Madrid.

 

ABOUT THE ROLE

Due to our consistent growth, we are expanding our Data, Software and DevOps team. We are seeking profiles dedicated to data engineering. At the core of the development of our scientific engine modeling climate phenomena, your main missions will be to create, improve and maintain the data pipelines used to train our model and infer the different scenario to make a climate risk assessment. You will have to take initiative and assess the viability of proof of concept projects.

You will get to work with data scientists and software engineers to run and develop our models. You will be working along DevOps engineers to reliably put models in production and selected the compute/store instance needed to perform these tasks. Your secondary mission will be to automate the flow of information between the tech and business to monitor climate events.

 

πŸ”” KEY MISSIONS πŸ””

  • Setup, automate, maintain and update:
    • Connections to external and internal APIs
    • Data preparation process
    • Model training and inference process
    • Data storage process
    • Associated CI/CD pipelines
    • Associated package versioning and releasing pipeline
    • Modularization of code base
    • Notification tools to inform the team of the status of the operations
  • Setup data storage, data processing and data visualizing tools, by:
    • Assessing the pains and needs of the teams
    • Benchmarking the open source and private solutions
    • Assessing the security, price and reliability of data architecture
    • Following the development the evolution of technologies on the topic
    • Forecasting the usage of the tools
    • Tracking the cost of the tools
  • Participate in:
    • Tech stack selection
    • Discussions with tech partners
    • Training of software and underwriting teams
    • Support and debug of internal users
  • Provide a technical direction on data engineering:
    • Work closely with software and devops leads to set the direction and goals
    • Provide a strong technical direction on data engineering
    • Ensure compliance to internal standards and practices
    • Present the progress and goals
    • Contribute to the technical roadmap through architecture and design
    • Lead & coach data engineers to consistently deliver according to their roadmap

 

TECH STACK πŸ–₯️

  • Cloud provider: GCP
  • Code versioning tool: Git + Gitlab
  • OS: Linux
  • Container: Docker
  • Container orchestrator: Kubernetes
  • Website architecture: LAMP
  • Code base: Python
  • Notification tool: Slack

 

DATA STACK πŸ—„️

  • Types: images, timeseries,
  • Storage: GCP bucket
  • Version: DVC (roll out in progress)
  • Pipeline: Airflow (PoC stage)
  • Data base: to be setup depending on the use cases

In our project, data is collected by sensors (satellite, weather station, IoT). We don’t work with personal or sensitive data, in most cases the data is publicly available (earthquake magnitude, cyclone track, precipitation …).

 

EQUIPMENT πŸ–±οΈ

  • Laptop: premium DELL XPS 15
  • OS: you decide

 

ABOUT YOU

EXPERIENCE & QUALIFICATIONS πŸ‘©‍πŸ’»πŸ‘¨‍πŸ’»

[Management skills]

  • 1 year of managing experience or project management
  • Tech roadmap and MVP critical path definition
  • Scoping and identifying solutions with business team
  • Handling human interactions between tech and business

[Hard skills]

  • Knowledge of the tech stack or equivalent tools
  • Experience converting python code to efficient data engineering tools (eg: spark)
  • Experience with Docker
  • Experience with a cloud provider (GCP, AWS or azure)
  • Experience automating a CI/CD pipeline
  • Good knowledge in English and fluency in French

[Soft skills]

  • Desire to train junior developers and explain CI/CD and cloud tools
  • Desire to suggest improvements to the architecture

[Nice-to-have]

  • Experience working data science project or scientific code
  • Experience with Kubernetes
  • Experience in HPC
  • Contribution to an open source project

 

MINDSET πŸ’₯

  • Strong interest with climate issue (it’s not a hoax, many people suffer from it)
  • Being comfortable to work alongside corporate insurers (some still wear suits πŸ‘”)
  • You enjoy CI/CD automation (or at least appreciate the elegance of a well-crafted pipeline)
  • Willingness to help junior developers (remember how you were when you started πŸ’¬)
  • Strong team spirit and ability to work (you’ll have to review code and have your code reviewed)
  • Rigorous, creative and meticulous mind (we handle large insurance, we take our time)
  • Strong desire to learn (there’s no limitation to the tech used, we’re happy to test and learn new tools)
  • Eagerness to work in a multi-cultural environment (policies and teams are from all around the world πŸ—ΊοΈ)

 

WHY JOIN DESCARTES UNDERWRITING?

  • Join a company with a true purpose – help us help our clients be more resilient towards climate risks
  • Commitment from Descartes to its staff of continued learning and development (think annual seminars, training etc.);
  • Work in a collaborative & professional environment;
  • Be part of an international team that values diversity;
  • Benefit from a nice referral scheme for successfully referring peers;
  • You can benefit from a hybrid work mode thanks to our telecommuting agreement.

 

OUR COMMUNITY

At Descartes Underwriting, we are committed to fighting against all forms of discrimination and for equal opportunities. We foster an inclusive work environment that respects all differences.

With equal skills, all our positions are open to people with disabilities.

 

HOW TO APPLY

If you want to develop your skills and work in a friendly start-up atmosphere, don't hesitate and send us your application! https://www.descartesunderwriting.com/careers/

If you don’t check all the requirements in the description, don’t worry. We can try to make some room for you within the company if you’re motivated to work on climate risk.


RECRUITMENT PROCESS

  • Step 1: Call and HR Interview with our Talent Recruiter
  • Step 2: Technical project submitted via GitHub
  • Step 3: Technical interview
  • Step 4: Manager interview
  • Step 5: Final round interview with the team
    (Candidates can opt to have the manager interview before the technical project and interview)
Apply now