Software Engineer, Data Systems

We are seeking a Software Engineer to join our engineering team and play a key role in building and scaling our core Data Systems.

Working closely with a small, highly collaborative group of engineers and data professionals, you will tackle critical components of our data ingestion, processing, storage, and backend services. This role sits at the intersection of data engineering and backend software development, with direct ownership of production systems that power both internal workflows and customer-facing products

The ideal candidate is engineering-first, comfortable working with large datasets, and motivated by building reliable, scalable systems that support data-driven products.

About Us

Launched in 2023, Institutional Link operates the most followed news and market intelligence platform dedicated to the global alternative asset secondary market ("SecondaryLink"). We deliver daily market news and research, proprietary secondary pricing data, evergreen fund data, and deal-sourcing tools used by top secondary funds, investment banks, institutional limited partners, and asset managers.

Our platform operates as both a media business and a data platform, tracking more than 75,000 private funds. By combining structured datasets with real-time market intelligence, SecondaryLink provides institutional investors with unparalleled visibility into liquidity, pricing, and deal activity.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain backend systems responsible for data ingestion, transformation, storage, and retrieval.
• Develop and maintain models, controllers, and services that support large-scale data processing and platform functionality.
• Write complex and optimized queries across relational and non-relational databases to support analytics, pricing, and product features.
• Build and maintain data pipelines involving web scraping, data mining, parsing of structured and unstructured sources (including HTML and PDFs), and data matching.
• Ensure data quality, integrity, and consistency across datasets used internally and exposed through platform features.
• Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize backend system performance, database performance, and data workflows.
• Collaborate with engineers, data analysts, and product stakeholders to translate data and platform requirements into scalable technical solutions.
• Contribute to system architecture discussions with a focus on performance, reliability, and maintainability.
• Support the development and deployment of AI-driven and data-enhanced features across the platform.
• Note that this role may evolve beyond this description. There is no limitation on the scope or impact the role may have over time.

Requirements

BACKEND & DATA ENGINEERING EXPERTISE

• Strong experience building backend systems that handle large datasets, data pipelines, and data-driven services.
• Proficiency in working with SQL and MongoDB, including writing complex queries and optimizing performance.
• Experience with data ingestion and transformation, including web scraping, data mining, parsing unstructured data, and data matching.
• Hands-on experience with TypeScript and backend application development.
• Comfort working with APIs, data services, and internal tooling that support both analytics and product use cases.
• Familiarity with Python and relevant libraries for data processing is strongly preferred.
• Experience using GitHub and standard version control workflows.

DATA SYSTEMS AND PLATFORM SKILLS

• Understanding of data warehousing concepts, analytics pipelines, and data lifecycle management.
• Ability to reason about data modeling, schema design, and long-term maintainability of datasets.
• Exposure to monitoring and optimizing backend and database performance in production environments.

EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• Minimum 1–3 years of professional experience in data engineering, backend engineering, or a hybrid data/backend role.

Nice to Have Skills

• Exposure to AI usage, LLMs, or API-driven AI workflows applied to data processing or product features.
• Familiarity with data lakes, cloud data infrastructure, or large-scale distributed systems.
• Experience with front-end frameworks such as Angular or similar, particularly for building internal tools or administrative interfaces.
• Understanding of best practices around data privacy, security, and access controls.

Why Join SecondaryLink?

• Be part of the world's fastest-growing alternative investments intelligence platform.
• Work at the intersection of finance, data, and technology.
• Join lean, growing, and innovative Engineering and Data teams with room for impact and ownership.
• Gain exposure to large-scale data challenges, modern frameworks, and end-to-end development.
• Enjoy regular social events, including our company book club, "Second Shelf".
• Casual dress, full benefits, and paid time off.

If you're excited about building scalable products that transform how financial intelligence is delivered — and want to make an impact in a fast-moving, startup environment — we'd love to hear from you.

Job Types: Full-time, Permanent

Pay: $70,000.00-$82,500.00 per year

Ability to commute/relocate:

• Toronto, ON: reliably commute or plan to relocate before starting work (required)

Education:

• Bachelor's Degree (required)

Experience:

• data engineering or backend development: 2 years (required)

Language:

• English (required)

Location:

• Toronto, ON (required)

Work Location: In person