About the job

Senior / Lead Data Engineer

Location: Melbourne or Sydney preferred

Other Australian locations considered

We are partnering with a growing technology consultancy seeking a Senior or Lead Data Engineer with strong experience across data engineering, cloud platforms, software development and customer-facing consulting.

This is not simply a heads-down data engineering position. You will work directly with technical teams, business stakeholders and customers to understand complex problems, design effective solutions and deliver production-grade data platforms.

The Role

You will take ownership of the design and delivery of modern cloud data platforms, primarily within AWS environments. Your responsibilities will include:

• Data platform architecture and engineering
• Data pipelines, modelling and transformation
• Cloud infrastructure and security
• DevOps, CI/CD and Infrastructure as Code
• Data warehousing, lakehouse and analytics platforms
• Technical discovery and solution design
• Customer and stakeholder consulting

At Lead level, you will also help set engineering standards, mentor engineers, review architecture and lead technical delivery across customer projects.

You will ideally bring:

• Strong commercial experience as a Senior, Lead or Principal Data Engineer
• A software engineering background before moving into data engineering
• Strong AWS experience
• Deep experience with Databricks, Snowflake or ClickHouse
• Strong Python and SQL skills
• Experience building scalable data pipelines and platforms
• Strong knowledge of data modelling, ETL/ELT and distributed systems
• Experience with CI/CD and Infrastructure as Code
• Exposure to security, governance, IAM and access controls
• Experience delivering production-grade systems, not purely reporting or BI solutions

Consulting Experience

We are particularly interested in engineers who have worked in consulting, professional services or customer-facing environments.

You should be comfortable:

• Working directly with customers and senior stakeholders
• Running discovery sessions and technical workshops
• Understanding business problems before recommending a solution
• Translating complex technical concepts into clear business language
• Challenging requirements when a stronger approach is available
• Defining solution architecture and delivery plans
• Working across multiple customers and technical environments
• Bridging the gap between engineering teams and business stakeholders

You do not need to be a salesperson, but you do need to be someone customers trust in the room.

Technical Environment

Experience across several of the following will be highly regarded:

• AWS
• Databricks, Snowflake or ClickHouse
• Python, SQL and Spark
• Kafka or other streaming technologies
• Docker and Kubernetes
• Terraform
• GitHub Actions, GitLab CI or similar
• Data lakes and lakehouse architectures
• APIs and microservices
• IAM and cloud security
• Data governance and observability

What Will Make You Stand Out

The ideal combination is:

Software Engineering + Data Engineering + AWS + Consulting

We are looking for someone who understands how modern software, infrastructure, security and data platforms fit together and can confidently explain that to a customer.

Melbourne or Sydney is preferred, although strong candidates elsewhere in Australia will also be considered.

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