Principal Data Engineer
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full-time
Posted on:
Location Type: Hybrid
Location: London • United Kingdom
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Job Level
About the role
- Own the Data Platform architecture and strategy, defining the long-term target state and setting clear standards and guardrails to ensure scalability, resilience, and cost efficiency.
- Set the engineering bar by establishing best practices across data ingestion, streaming, transformation, modelling, CI/CD, orchestration, testing, observability, and governance.
- Act as the senior technical authority across data engineering, influencing architecture decisions and leading the Data Engineering Community of Practice to raise capability across the organisation.
- Champion “data as a product”, ensuring datasets and platform services are reliable, discoverable, reusable, and governed with clear ownership and service expectations.
- Drive strategic technical direction while remaining hands-on where it matters—reviewing designs, validating patterns, and guiding complex problem-solving without becoming a delivery bottleneck.
Requirements
- Extensive experience in Data Engineering within modern, cloud-based data platforms.
- Deep expertise in streaming-first architectures, with strong knowledge of batch processing approaches.
- Strong experience across AWS data ecosystems, Databricks, dbt, CI/CD practices, and orchestration frameworks.
- Proven track record of defining and implementing large-scale platform architecture and engineering standards.
- Strong understanding of data modelling, ingestion patterns, performance optimisation, observability, governance, and security.
- Experience influencing senior engineers and stakeholders across multiple teams without formal authority.
- Experience leading engineering communities of practice and raising technical standards at organisational scale.
- Ability to operate independently in complex, high-impact environments.
Benefits
- Flexible working hours
- Professional development opportunities
Applicant Tracking System Keywords
Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.
Hard Skills & Tools
data engineeringcloud-based data platformsstreaming architecturesbatch processingdata modellingdata ingestionperformance optimisationobservabilitygovernancesecurity
Soft Skills
influencingleadershipproblem-solvingindependencecommunication