Principal Data Engineer

Salary: £90,000 - 90,000 per year

Requirements:

• Proven hands-on experience building modern cloud data platforms end to end, from ingestion through to analytics and AI consumption, not just overseeing others doing it
• Strong Azure data engineering background, including Data Factory, Synapse and/or Fabric, with solid SQL and pipeline/ETL-ELT fundamentals
• Direct experience implementing medallion or equivalent layered lakehouse architecture
• Comfortable being the most senior technical person in the room while still writing pipelines and making architectural decisions personally
• Some experience leading, mentoring or growing a data engineering team
• Strong stakeholder communication skills and confidence working with both technical and non-technical audiences
• Nice to have: production experience specifically in Microsoft Fabric
• Nice to have: Power BI, particularly Direct Lake mode
• Nice to have: Python/PySpark
• Nice to have: data governance or security experience
• Nice to have: experience enabling AI/ML workloads from a data platform, not just BI

Responsibilities:

• Design and build a modern data platform in Azure Fabric, from ingestion through to a governed lakehouse/warehouse and on to analytics and AI enablement
• Implement medallion architecture (bronze/silver/gold) as the core data model
• Set technical direction as the senior technical owner of the data function
• Work closely with the CIO and business stakeholders to translate requirements into a scalable, governed platform
• Enable downstream analytics and AI/ML use cases as the platform matures
• Lead and grow a small data engineering team over time
• Take ownership of the existing data solution and lead its development into a scalable, governed platform that supports reporting, analytics and AI
• Design and build data solutions personally, rather than operating only at a strategic or management level

Technologies:

• AI
• Azure
• Cloud
• ETL
• Fabric
• Power BI
• Python
• PySpark
• SQL
• Security
• Machine Learning

More:

We are a Leicester-based team offering a hybrid working model with 3 days per week onsite. This senior, hands-on Principal Data Engineer role reports to our CIO and owns the technical direction, delivery and continuous improvement of our modern data platform. We are working within the Microsoft Fabric toolset to develop a governed platform that supports reporting, analytics and AI, with an existing direct report and future team growth based on delivery priorities, demonstrated value and platform maturity. The role offers a salary of £80,000-£90,000 plus bonus.

last updated 39 week of 2026