About the job

Senior Data Engineer

London – hybrid working

£85,000–£100,000 plus 10% bonus

My client is looking for a Senior Data Engineer to join its Enterprise Data function. This is a senior, hands-on role for someone who is technically excellent but also comfortable leading other engineers and taking responsibility for the quality of the team’s work.

The data platform is built in Azure, with Databricks at its core. My client therefore needs someone with strong, recent Databricks experience rather than someone who has only used it briefly or several years ago.

The successful candidate will have three main responsibilities: delivering complex data engineering work, providing day-to-day technical leadership to other engineers, and acting as the number-two technologist within the Enterprise Data team.

The role will focus on:

• Designing and building scalable data solutions using Azure and Databricks
• Developing batch and streaming data pipelines from databases, APIs and Kafka
• Building trusted datasets for reporting, analytics, data science and AI
• Working with Python, PySpark, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog and SQL
• Developing dimensional data models using Kimball principles
• Reviewing code, technical designs, Terraform and testing
• Ensuring the team’s engineering work meets the required quality and governance standards
• Supporting Data Engineers with technical decisions and complex problems
• Contributing to the architecture and wider technical direction of the data function
• Improving CI/CD, automated testing, monitoring and platform reliability

The role would suit someone with:

• At least five to seven years’ experience in data engineering
• Strong and current Azure Databricks experience
• Advanced Python, PySpark and SQL skills
• Strong knowledge of Delta Lake, Unity Catalog and data modelling
• Experience with Azure Data Factory and Azure Data Lake Storage
• Experience of infrastructure as code and Azure resource management
• A strong understanding of software engineering principles, automated testing and CI/CD
• Recent experience leading or mentoring Data Engineers
• The ability to review and assure the quality of other engineers’ work
• An interest in architecture and the ambition to take on broader technical responsibility

This is not a traditional management role and the successful candidate will remain highly hands-on. However, they will need to be capable of leading by example, setting technical standards and helping develop the engineers around them.

Experience with Function Apps, Logic Apps, streaming technologies, Purview, Power BI or AI would be useful but is not essential.

Please get in touch if you would like to discuss the role in more detail.