Senior Data Engineer

Principal Data Engineer

We are looking for an experienced Principal Data Engineer to lead the design, implementation, governance, and continuous improvement of enterprise data platforms, pipelines, and architectures. This is a senior technical leadership role focused on building secure, scalable, and reliable data solutions that enable data-driven decision-making and advanced analytics across the organisation.

The Role

As Principal Data Engineer, you will provide technical leadership across data engineering activities, helping to shape modern cloud-based data platforms and establish best-practice approaches for data integration, quality, governance, and automation. You will work closely with business stakeholders, architects, analysts, and software engineering teams to deliver robust data solutions aligned with strategic objectives.

Key Responsibilities
Design and maintain scalable, secure, and resilient data architectures and platforms.
Lead the development of enterprise data pipelines, integration frameworks, and data products.
Establish and promote data engineering standards, patterns, and best practices.
Implement DataOps and DevOps methodologies to improve deployment efficiency, automation, and operational reliability.
Collaborate with cross-functional teams to understand data requirements and deliver effective solutions.
Ensure data quality, integrity, lineage, security, and compliance across data assets.
Provide technical leadership, mentoring, and coaching to data engineering teams.
Support cloud migration and modernisation initiatives involving data platforms and services.
Identify opportunities to optimise performance, reduce costs, and increase scalability.
Manage technical risks, dependencies, and delivery challenges associated with data solutions.
Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend innovative approaches to enhance data capability.
Support the development of data governance frameworks and architecture roadmaps.

What You'll Bring
A strong background in data engineering, software engineering, or data platform development.
Experience designing and implementing enterprise-scale data solutions.
Strong understanding of cloud-based data platforms and modern data architectures.
Ability to design reusable, scalable, and maintainable data architecture patterns.
Experience establishing standards for ingestion, transformation, storage, and consumption of data.
Knowledge of CI/CD practices for data pipelines and infrastructure.
Experience with automation, monitoring, testing, deployment, and recovery processes.
Understanding of data governance, data quality, metadata management, lineage, auditability, and information security principles.
Strong stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to influence technical decisions and build relationships across business and technology teams.
Experience planning technical work, managing dependencies, and mitigating risks across complex projects or programmes.