Data Engineer | Volunteer Intern for Open Data ESG Project

If you care about climate change and want to learn how data engineering can support climate accountability, this internship could be a great fit.

Who we are

We are Climate Accountability API, a climate tech nonprofit organization based in Berlin. We are currently one of the world’s leading providers of real-time data (APIs) related to global warming and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, serving around 80,000 software applications at no cost.

Recently, we won the national competition for the E.ON Foundation’s European Climate Fund, securing a €10,000 prize. These funds are being used to develop our prototype: a suite of software applications designed to inform the public about the environmental impact of companies operating in the European Union and around the world. By empowering people with this information, we aim to shift resources away from carbon-intensive businesses toward greener alternatives, accelerating the transition to a sustainable future.

The role

We are seeking a Data Engineer to help us build a scalable ESG data ingestion and processing infrastructure. You will design and implement systems that collect, normalize, and structure ESG data from multiple sources, including company websites, annual reports (PDFs), news, and open datasets.

You’ll work closely with our LLM engineer and broader team to ensure high-quality data pipelines that power our AI-driven ESG platform. Your work will be foundational in enabling reliable, structured, and continuously updated open ESG insights.

Tech stack

• Python for data pipelines, scraping, and processing
• Directus CMS for data management and dashboards
• JavaScript for integrations and tooling
• Shell scripting for automation and orchestration
• HCL (Terraform) for infrastructure as code
• DigitalOcean for cloud infrastructure and deployment

What you’ll do

• You will support the design and development of ESG data ingestion pipelines to collect ESG data from diverse sources (web scraping, APIs, PDFs, open datasets, and news).
• You will support the development of connectors and ingestion frameworks to continuously gather and update company-level ESG data.
• Help clean, normalize, and structure data for downstream AI systems.
• Learn document parsing and extraction for PDFs, HTML, and other semi-structured data.
• Collaborate with the LLM engineer to integrate structured data into retrieval and AI pipelines.
• Help optimize data pipelines for scalability, reliability, and performance.
• Contribute to building an open, collaborative ESG data platform.

What we’re looking for

• Experience or completed studies in data engineering, data pipelines, or backend data systems.
• Knowledge of Python and working with data processing frameworks.
• Interest in web scraping, APIs, and unstructured data extraction.
• Experience with databases (SQL/NoSQL) and data modeling.
• Familiarity handling semi-structured data (PDFs, HTML, JSON) is highly valued.
• Comfort working with cloud infrastructure and deployment workflows.
• Interest in climate, sustainability, or ESG topics.
• Nice to have: familiarity with LLMs, RAG systems, or AI data pipelines.

What we offer

• €80/month allowance for transportation and other expenses.
• Access to the hardware, equipment, and software needed to perform the internship tasks.
• Access to a strong impact community, networking activities, and events.
• Close collaboration with the founder and core technical team.
• Regular feedback and support from our team of data scientists, researchers, and AI specialists.
• Opportunity to transition into a part-time or full-time position when funding allows.
• Opportunity to acquire equity in our upcoming for-profit subsidiary focused on user-facing applications.

Why join us

You’ll be joining a project that combines data infrastructure, AI, transparency, and climate action at an early stage, with the chance to contribute to the foundation of the product while learning hands-on in a collaborative environment. If you want to build meaningful technology with real-world impact, this is a strong opportunity to do it in a hands-on, collaborative environment.