Hire Big Data Engineer in Poland

Why hire a Big Data Engineer in Poland?

You hire a Big Data Engineer in Poland because the country combines a large pool of engineers experienced with Spark, Kafka and the Hadoop ecosystem, fluent English and full EU legal certainty at 40-55% less than Western European total cost. Banks, telecoms, AdTech and e-commerce companies process terabytes of data a day from their Polish engineering hubs, so experience at real scale is common.

Polish big data engineers work with PySpark and Scala, Kafka and Flink, Delta Lake and Iceberg, on AWS EMR, GCP Dataproc or Azure Databricks, and many have migrated on-premise Hadoop clusters to the cloud. The CET time zone gives you a full working-day overlap with the Nordics, DACH, Benelux and the UK, and GDPR applies directly. Big Data Engineer recruitment in Poland gives you large-scale data processing skills inside the EU.

What does a Big Data Engineer do?

A Big Data Engineer designs and runs the distributed batch and streaming systems that process data at terabyte scale. At senior level this person owns the architecture and performance of the data platform.

• Designs and builds batch and streaming pipelines with Apache Spark and Apache Kafka
• Builds and optimises Hadoop clusters (HDFS, YARN, Hive) and migrates workloads to the cloud
• Creates ETL/ELT processes that handle terabytes of data a day
• Models data in warehouses and lakehouses with Delta Lake or Apache Iceberg
• Automates job orchestration with Apache Airflow or Dagster
• Ensures data quality, monitoring and alerting in production pipelines
• Optimises cost and query performance in the cloud – AWS EMR, GCP Dataproc, Azure Databricks
• Delivers feature stores and datasets for data scientists and ML models
• Implements data security and governance – GDPR, encryption and access control
• Documents the architecture and reviews PySpark and Scala code in the team

Skills and experience to look for

Look for expert Spark skills, streaming experience and at least three years of running big data systems in production.

Big Data Engineer salary in Poland (2026)

A senior Big Data Engineer in Poland earns roughly €4,200-7,000 gross per month on an employment contract (18,000-30,000 PLN), while B2B contractor rates run about €30-47 per hour (130-200 PLN). The exact figure depends on several drivers:

• Location – Warsaw and fully remote work for foreign companies sit at the top of the range; smaller cities pay 10-15% less
• Industry – fintech, banking and AdTech pay a 15-20% premium over industrial corporations
• Certifications – Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional or AWS/GCP data certifications add about 8-12%
• Experience – petabyte-scale projects and Scala skills put a candidate at the top of the range
• Contract model – B2B usually gives a higher net income than an employment contract

A standard package includes private medical care, a training budget of about €700-1,400 per year (3,000-6,000 PLN), a sports card, flexible hours and remote or hybrid work. Product companies often add an annual bonus and paid cloud certification exams.

How Smartways hires a Big Data Engineer for you

Smartways runs a structured, technically verified search, so you only interview big data engineers who can already do the job.

1. Discovery (days 1-2): we align on your data volumes, platform, cloud, seniority and budget
2. Sourcing (days 2-7): we map and approach passive big data engineers from banks, telecoms, AdTech and e-commerce
3. Screening (days 5-10): Spark, streaming and data-modelling assessment, English check and references
4. Shortlist & interviews (days 7-14): you meet 3-5 pre-qualified Big Data Engineers with our notes
5. Offer & onboarding (weeks 3-4): we manage negotiation, contract and start date

You typically receive a shortlist in 7-10 days and complete a hire in 3-4 weeks. We support three engagement models: permanent placement (direct employment on your or a local entity), B2B contractor (contractor on an hourly or monthly rate), and body leasing where Smartways handles the employment and compliance while the Big Data Engineer works fully for you.

FAQ – hiring a Big Data Engineer in Poland

How much does it cost to hire a Big Data Engineer in Poland?

Budget €4,200-7,000 gross monthly for a senior Big Data Engineer on an employment contract, or about €30-47 per hour on B2B.

What is the difference between a Big Data Engineer and a Data Engineer?

A Data Engineer builds pipelines and models for analytics on a modern data stack. A Big Data Engineer specialises in distributed processing at very large scale – Spark, Kafka, Hadoop and lakehouse architectures.

Can a Big Data Engineer work fully remotely?

Yes. Remote and hybrid work are standard for big data roles in Poland, and the CET time zone keeps collaboration simple.

Which technologies must a senior Big Data Engineer know?

Spark (PySpark or Scala), Kafka, a cloud data platform, Airflow or Dagster and a lakehouse format such as Delta Lake or Iceberg. We match candidates to your exact stack.

Can Smartways build the wider data team?

Yes. Alongside big data engineers we recruit data engineers, data scientists and cloud architects.