Principal Data Engineer
Required skills
8+ years' commercial experience in a data engineering or data-focused software engineering role, including experience operating at a senior or lead level. Experience owning data platforms end-to-end, including considerations around reliability, scalability, cost and governance. A track record of setting technical direction, establishing standards and leading architectural decisions across data workstreams. Experience mentoring and growing engineers, and contributing to how the team works as well as what it builds. Strong problem-solving skills and an ability to navigate ambiguity, shaping solutions from incomplete or evolving requirements. Clear communication skills and experience collaborating with both technical teams and senior non-technical stakeholders. Commercial experience including a combination of the following: Python for data processing, transformation, pipeline development and the design of reusable frameworks or shared tooling AWS data services such as S3, Lambda, Glue (or comparable cloud services), including platform design and cost-aware architecture Designing, building and maintaining ETL/ELT pipelines in production environments at scale Expert SQL skills, including complex queries, performance tuning and warehouse optimisation Deep experience with a cloud data warehouse such as Snowflake (or similar), covering data models, pipelines, warehouse objects and governance Handling semi-structured data (e.g. JSON, Parquet) alongside structured datasets
Preferred skills
Experience with data orchestration or scheduling tools, including patterns for reliability and observability. Exposure to CI/CD practices for data pipelines, including testing strategies and deployment automation. Familiarity with analytics or BI use cases and the consumers of data. Experience with data governance, access control, lineage or security concepts at a platform level. Exposure to streaming or event-driven data architectures. Experience working in agile, delivery-focused teams and influencing how those teams operate.
Technologies
Python, AWS data services (S3, Lambda, Glue), ETL/ELT pipelines, SQL, cloud data warehouse (Snowflake), semi-structured data (JSON, Parquet)
Responsibilities
Work hands-on across our cloud data stack, partnering with engineers, analysts and senior stakeholders to deliver reliable, well-modelled data that supports analytics and downstream use cases. Designing, building and improving data pipelines, setting engineering standards, and helping shape how we approach data engineering as a discipline. Bringing depth across modern data engineering practices and playing a key role in growing the capability of the team around you.
Seniority
Senior or lead level
Domain
Data engineering, cloud computing, analytics, data pipelines
