Junior Data Engineer — Web Scraping & Pipelines

Junior Data Engineer — Web Scraping & Pipelines

Montreal, QC
· On-site (4 days) / Remote (1 day)
· Full-Time·$65,000 – $75,000 CAD

Master Art Index (MAI) is building the definitive intelligence layer for the global art market. We develop AI‑driven valuation models, structured databases, and financial‑grade data infrastructure for blue‑chip modern and contemporary artworks. Our platform sits at the intersection of finance, technology, and art — enabling institutional‑quality analysis in one of the world’s most opaque asset classes.

We are a lean, cross‑functional team of AI engineers, computer vision specialists, product managers, and full‑stack developers. We move fast, value ownership, and build things that don’t yet exist.

We’re looking for someone who can confidently use Python and SQL to build and maintain the scrapers that power MAI. Your job is to collect publicly available art market data from the web, clean and standardize it, and store it reliably in our database. You’ll own these pipelines end to end and keep them running smoothly as we grow.

This is a hands‑on, high‑ownership role. Some of the infrastructure is already built — you’ll extend it and keep it healthy. You’ll work closely with our AI engineers, computer vision engineer, product manager, and full‑stack developers, reporting to the Head of AI Engineering.

If you’ve built scrapers, wrangled messy data, and are comfortable with Python and SQL, we’d like to hear from you — even if your background or job title hasn’t traditionally been in data engineering. Strong backend developers and recent graduates with the right skills are welcome to apply.

• Build and maintain scrapers that collect publicly available art market data from web sources using Python (e.g. Scrapy, Beautiful Soup, Playwright, or Selenium).
• Clean, transform, and standardize messy, inconsistent real‑world data so it’s ready for use.
• Store the cleaned data reliably in our PostgreSQL database — designing sensible schemas and writing efficient queries.
• Keep the pipelines running: schedule jobs, monitor for failures, and keep the data fresh.
• Apply basic data quality checks and validation so the data downstream teams rely on stays accurate.

• 2+ years of experience writing Python for real‑world tasks — or a recent graduate with strong, demonstrable Python skills.
• Comfortable with SQL and relational databases (PostgreSQL a plus): writing queries and designing simple schemas.
• Experience (personal projects count) building web scrapers and handling messy, inconsistent data.
• A practical, self‑directed approach — you’re comfortable owning a task from start to finish.

• Experience scheduling or orchestrating pipelines (cron, Apache Airflow, AWS Event Bridge, or equivalent).
• Hands‑on AWS experience (Lambda, EC2, S3, RDS).
• Familiarity with containerization (Docker) or infrastructure‑as‑code (Terraform, AWS CDK).
• Familiarity with ETL/ELT tooling (dbt, AWS Glue, or equivalent).
• Exposure to art market platforms (Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Artsy, Artnet) or how auction and gallery data is structured.
• An interest in the art world, collectibles, or alternative asset markets.

• A genuinely hard, technically interesting problem — art market data is sparse, inconsistent, and largely unstructured.
• High ownership from day one on infrastructure that is already in use and growing.
• A lean, senior cross‑functional team: no bureaucracy, fast decisions, direct access to leadership.
• Proximity to cutting‑edge AI and computer vision work applied to a non‑commoditized domain.
• Flexible Friday remote work with four collaborative in‑office days in Montreal.
• Competitive base compensation: $65,000 – $75,000 CAD, commensurate with experience.

Montréal (QC)
· Présentiel (4 jours) / Télétravail (1 jour)
· Temps plein
· 65000 $ – 75000 $ CA

Master Art Index (MAI) construit la couche d’intelligence de référence pour le marché mondial de l’art. Nous développons des modèles d’évaluation fondés sur l’intelligence artificielle, des bases de données…