Staff Crawling Engineer (m/w/d)

The Kaske Group, headquartered in Munich, provides data, software and AI solutions for companies in the healthcare and life sciences sectors. Since 1997, we have grown into an integrated platform provider, combining one of the largest digital healthcare databases in the DACH region with data-driven software, AI and consulting services. With more than 100 customers and projects across 22 European countries, we support our clients from strategic data analysis through to implementation.

This role sits within Smile BI Devs, the Kaske Group’s software and analytics unit, where we develop data-driven products for the healthcare and life sciences industry.

You will:

• Design, build and maintain Node.js-based crawling and data-collection services for static, dynamic and JavaScript-rendered websites.
• Develop reliable crawling processes with appropriate concurrency, scheduling, retries, monitoring and failure recovery.
• Integrate crawling services with Kafka and downstream data-processing systems.
• Ensure the completeness, consistency, timeliness and quality of collected data.
• Diagnose and resolve production failures, website changes and performance issues.
• Provide realistic estimates and communicate assumptions, dependencies and delivery risks early.
• Contribute to architecture, code reviews and technical standards while improving testability, documentation and maintainability.
• Collaborate across engineering, product and business teams, share knowledge and mentor other engineers without formal people-management responsibility.

• 10 years or more of professional software-engineering experience, or equivalent demonstrated Staff-level capability.
• Substantial experience building and operating production web crawlers, web-scraping systems or comparable data-acquisition services.
• Advanced Node.js and JavaScript skills, including asynchronous programming, concurrency and event-driven processing.
• Strong knowledge of HTTP, HTML, DOM structures, APIs and dynamically rendered websites.
• Practical experience with browser-automation tools such as Puppeteer, Playwright or Selenium.
• Experience designing reliable production processes involving queues, retries, rate limits, timeouts and failure recovery.
• Experience with SQL, relational databases, Git, Linux and Docker.
• Strong technical ownership, structured problem-solving and the ability to provide realistic estimates.
• Clear, proactive communication around assumptions, blockers, risks and changing timelines.
• Professional working proficiency in English.

Nice to have:

• TypeScript or Python experience.
• Experience with Kafka and PostgreSQL.
• Knowledge of CI/CD, monitoring, alerting and observability.
• Experience with proxy management, access restrictions or resilient browser automation.
• Experience working with international websites, multilingual data or e-commerce datasets.

• Flexible working setup: Work remotely, with occasional office days and a workspace available whenever you need it.
• Flexible working hours: Organise your day in a way that supports both effective collaboration and focused work.
• Private healthcare insurance: Additional support for your health and well-being.
• Training budget: €1,000 per year for your professional development.
• 35 days of annual leave: Because proper rest matters.
• Paid parking: Available for added convenience when you work from the office.
• Office kitchen: Snacks, tea and coffee whenever you are onsite.
• Dog-friendly workplace: Well-behaved four-legged colleagues are welcome.