Job: Tech Support Engineer (d/w/m)

About OpenSanctions

OpenSanctions helps to keep people and companies accountable for their political and economic actions. We build a database that tracks a wide range of entities in the public interest: sanctioned companies, politicians, fraudsters, and criminals. Originally built to support anti-corruption journalists, OpenSanctions has also become a powerful tool used by hundreds of commercial clients worldwide for KYC/AML screening, legal compliance, and in-depth investigative analysis.

We take pride in providing a high-quality dataset to the public and to our subscribers. Transparency and accessibility are at the core of everything we do: our entire data pipeline is open source, and public search is free for everyone. After bootstrapping OpenSanctions into a sustainable small business in the past three years, we’re looking for a Developer Support Specialist to join our Support team to help our customers with their implementation of OpenSanctions.

Where you fit in

We’re looking to add a Tech Support Engineer to our team to be the technical counterpart to our Customer Success & Community Manager. Your mission is to make sure every user, from solo investigator to enterprise fintech, can deploy, integrate and scale our data and API with confidence.

This is a support-first role: you’ll spend most of your time talking to customers (email, Forum, Slack, video calls) and turning their questions into clear answers, sample code and/or improved docs. Occasionally, you’ll dive a bit deeper, such as writing a short Python script, crafting a complex API query, or guiding a DevOps team through a Docker/Kubernetes deployment. If you enjoy the engineering craft but prefer helping people over chasing the next sprint, this is for you.

What you’ll do

• Triage and resolve questions about our API, data model and self-hosted stack (Docker Compose, etc.) via HubSpot, forum, Slack and video calls.
• Create solution snippets (Python, Bash/curl, Postman collections) that show customers how to query, filter or match data.
• Coach customers through deployment on-premise/on-cloud installs, provisioning and performance tuning.
• Turn recurring questions into crisp how-to’s and contribute to our Docs and FAQs.
• Capture bugs, feature ideas and UX friction by working with engineering to prioritize fixes and close the loop with users.
• Shape support tooling & SLAs by designing lightweight queues, metrics and escalation paths as our support function grows.
• Work with Customer Success to see areas of opportunity/pain points that our users may be having so we can keep the experience as great as possible.

About you

• Comfortable reading API docs, writing HTTP requests and inspecting JSON.
• Have written small scripts in Python, JavaScript or similar to glue APIs together.
• Have tinkered with Docker containers; bonus for having heard of Kubernetes, Terraform or CI/CD.
• Enjoy translating tech speak into plain English (and vice versa) and have done so in any prior customer-facing role, (barista, sysadmin, SaaS rep, you name it).
• Stay organized when several customers ping you at once and naturally prioritize tickets.
• Can work overlapping hours to Central European Time zone (preferably CET +/- 3)

Nice to haves

• Exposure to entity-resolution / fuzzy-matching techniques.
• Interest or coursework in political science, OSINT, AML/KYC or investigative research, as many teammates came from that path.
• Additional languages beyond English.

What we offer

• Flexible workload - 50%-100%; tell us what suits you.
• Remote-first culture with an optional desk in our Berlin office.
• Async culture and flexible hours - work where and when you’re most productive.
• Small, friendly team - zero “hyper-growth” burnout vibes.
• Employment under German law if resident in Germany, freelance contract or EOR elsewhere.

How to apply

Email jobs@opensanctions.org with a short note on why you’re excited, plus your CV and any public repos, blog posts or tech writing you’re proud of.

We look forward to meeting you!