Lead Data Engineer

Salary: £95,000 - 95,000 per year

Requirements:

• Strong senior/lead-level experience in data engineering.
• Deep experience with GCP, particularly BigQuery, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, Cloud Storage and Cloud Composer/Airflow.
• Advanced Python and SQL skills with a strong software engineering mindset.
• Proven experience building complex, scalable batch and event-driven pipelines.
• Strong data modelling experience, including dimensional modelling, Data Vault or equivalent.
• Experience with Dataform or similar SQL-based transformation tooling.
• Understanding of CI/CD, Git, automated testing and infrastructure as code, particularly Terraform.
• Experience implementing data quality, monitoring, observability and alerting.
• Ability to lead architecture decisions and communicate technical trade-offs clearly.
• Desirable: Spark/DataProc, Looker or similar BI tools, analytics engineering, data mesh/platform architecture, GCP cost optimisation, and experience within retail or e-commerce environments.

Responsibilities:

• Provide hands-on technical leadership within a data engineering team.
• Lead the technical design and architecture of data pipelines, models and platform components.
• Establish standards across code quality, testing, security, observability and documentation.
• Drive technical discovery, design sessions, code reviews and resolution of technical debt.
• Design and deliver scalable batch and streaming data solutions.
• Mentor and coach engineers, supporting technical development and knowledge sharing.
• Make informed recommendations on tools, technologies and architectural approaches.
• Champion data quality, governance, security and compliance by design.
• Collaborate with data, product and technology teams to deliver joined-up solutions.
• Contribute to technical hiring, onboarding and team capability development.

Technologies:

• Airflow
• BigQuery
• CI/CD
• Cloud
• Composer
• Data Vault
• GCP
• Git
• Support
• Looker
• Python
• SQL
• Security
• Spark
• Terraform

More:

We are a large retail brand based in the West Midlands, offering a hybrid working model with 3 days per week onsite. We are looking for an experienced Lead Data Engineer to shape the technical direction of our data engineering team and help us deliver scalable, resilient data platforms and high-quality data solutions. We offer a performance-related bonus, healthcare and employer pension contributions, 25 days holiday plus your birthday and bank holidays, flexible benefits including EV, dental, cycle-to-work and holiday trading schemes, employee discounts and wellbeing support, enhanced family leave and life assurance, onsite gym membership, lunch and coffee facilities, and EV charging available.

last updated 35 week of 2026