Sparks Group

Full-Stack Engineer (Contract-to-Hire)

Automotive Data Platform

Location:Washington, DC Area | Hybrid

Engagement:Contract-to-Hire (3–6 month evaluation)

Compensation:Competitive hourly rate during contract

ABOUT THE COMPANY
We're a fully funded software startup—a spinoff from a larger organization—currently operating in stealth. We build enterprise-grade software for automotive and insurance clients, automating complex manual workflows and delivering real-time operational visibility across critical business operations.

We're already processing live data for seven tenants and preparing for enterprise scale. We are now seeking a strong engineer to lead our data analysis and classification systems.

We're at a critical inflection point: scaling from a proven prototype to a production-grade, multi-tenant SaaS platform.

THE ROLE
You will own the data backbone of the platform—systems responsible for ingesting, processing, classifying, and analyzing dealership operational data.

This role sits at the intersection of data engineering, domain modeling, and production reliability. This is systems work—not CRUD.

What You'll Own

• Designing and maintaining real-time ingestion pipelines

• Modeling complex automotive domain logic (parts, services, business rules)

• Designing secure multi-tenant architectures with strict data isolation

• Integrating with third-party, dealership, and manufacturer APIs

First 90 Days

• Improve ingestion reliability and data quality

• Document core business logic and data flows

• Enhance core processing engines

• Optimize PostgreSQL queries and RLS policies

• Improve monitoring and alerting

• Establish testing and deployment standards

TECH STACK
Frontend:React 18, TypeScript, Vite, MUI, Material React Table, TanStack Query

Backend:NestJS 10 (TypeScript monorepo – API + Workers)

Database:PostgreSQL (Supabase, Row-Level Security, Prisma ORM)

Async Processing:BullMQ + Redis (Upstash)

Integrations:SOAP, REST

Infrastructure:Railway, Vercel, Supabase

Tooling:GitHub Actions, Playwright, Jest, AI-assisted development (tool-agnostic)

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 2+ years building data-intensive applications

• Strong regex skills for data parsing

• Strong TypeScript (frontend + backend)

• Experience with NestJS, Express, or Fastify

• React with component libraries (MUI, Chakra, etc.)

• Advanced PostgreSQL skills (queries, indexing, optimization)

• Experience with async job queues (BullMQ/Bull)

• Experience with exploratory data analysis (EDA)

• Third-party API integrations (REST and/or SOAP)

• Ability to work independently in an async environment

• Open to using AI tools

• Willing to switch contexts and resolve ambiguity

• Keen to contribute to a project already in progress

NICE TO HAVE

• Multi-tenant SaaS and RLS experience

• Automotive or dealership domain knowledge

• Supabase or Prisma experience

• Data grids (Material React Table)

• ETL pipelines

• Data classification systems

• Data quality monitoring

• Experience in regulated or complex industries

THIS ROLE MAY NOT BE FOR YOU IF...

• You prefer highly structured environments with detailed specifications

• You're primarily interested in greenfield development

• Ambiguity or frequent context-switching feels frustrating

WHY THIS ROLE

• Direct business impact

• Deep technical challenges

• High ownership and autonomy

• Niche industry with real problems—and less noise

INTERVIEW PROCESS

• Intro call (30 min)

• Technical discussion (60 min)

• Final conversation (30 min)

• References

The hiring process typically takes 7–10 days to complete.

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS
Submit:

• Resume or LinkedIn

• GitHub or code samples

• Hourly rate expectations

• Please include one complex data problem you've solved and why it was interesting

Job Type: Contract

Application Question(s):

• Describe your experience writing code to parse and/or clean datasets.
• Describe your experience building and/or testing regular expressions.
• Describe how you would communicate results and influence decisions based on technical analysis.
• Describe your experience building, tuning, and/or testing deterministic algorithms.

Ability to Commute:

• Alexandria, VA (Required)

Work Location: Hybrid remote in Alexandria, VA