Lead Data Engineer

Principal Data Engineer Salary: £100,000 15% Bonus Location: Central London, 2 days in office We’re hiring on behalf of our client, a global leader in personalized photo products, for an experienced Principal Data Engineer to join their UK data & ML team. This is a senior hands-on leadership role driving data platform strategy and engineering standards as they evolve toward de-centralised data and ML adoption. Role overview: You’ll play a central role in re-architecting and scaling their data platform to meet growing business and customer needs. This includes building robust, observable data pipelines, ensuring data trustworthiness, and mentoring a team of engineers while collaborating closely with Product, Ops, and Marketing stakeholders. Key responsibilities: Lead design and build of scalable, cloud-native data solutions with best-in-class governance and observability Define technical principles and data engineering standards across distributed teams Coach data and analytics engineers on SDLC best practices (CI/CD, testing, versioning) Contribute to strategic planning and technical roadmaps in collaboration with product and engineering leads Influence cross-functional stakeholders on architecture and implementation trade-offs Ensure data is reliable, timely, and actionable for operational and ML-driven use cases About you: Strong background in software and data engineering leadership Proficient in Python, SQL, and modern ELT practices (e.g. dbt, Fivetran, Airflow) Deep knowledge of data warehousing (Snowflake), AWS services (e.g. Lambda, Kinesis, S3), and IaC (Terraform) Experienced in building data platforms with a focus on governance, reliability, and business value Comfortable driving architectural conversations and mentoring engineers across disciplines Advocate for decentralised data models, such as data mesh Nice to have: Experience with data quality tools (e.g., Monte Carlo) Knowledge of data security and compliance Previous work in e-commerce or consumer tech This is a chance to shape the next generation of data systems powering personalised customer experiences at scale - while working in a people-first, purpose-driven culture.