Lead Data Engineer

OpenSource
Manchester
4 months ago
Applications closed

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Lead Data Engineer

Lead Data Engineer

We are partnering with a fast-growing SaaS company to hire a Lead Data Engineer who will help shape and scale their next-generation data and analytics platform.


This role sits within a modern data function where engineering, analytics, and product work closely together. The Lead Data Engineer will guide a small team, own the full data lifecycle, and deliver trusted, high-performance data products that support customers and internal stakeholders.

It’s a hands-on leadership role with strong technical influence — ideal for someone who enjoys building scalable pipelines, improving data quality, and shaping the direction of a growing platform.


What You’ll Be Doing

  • Leading a small team of data engineers and analysts to design, build, and maintain scalable data solutions.
  • Owning the end-to-end data lifecycle — from ingestion and transformation through to analytics and data product delivery.
  • Architecting and operating pipelines using Databricks, Spark, and Delta Lake, ensuring performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency.
  • Working closely with BI developers and analysts to deliver dashboards, extracts, datasets, and APIs that power customer insights.
  • Shaping platform architecture and setting technical direction for data engineering best practices.
  • Driving improvements in data quality, lineage, governance, and observability.
  • Playing a key role in data DevOps, CI/CD, testing, and cloud operations.
  • Partnering with product and engineering teams to align work with the platform roadmap.
  • Overseeing operational monitoring and support for the data platform.
  • Promoting a learning culture in the team and encouraging experimentation with new tools and approaches.
  • Mentoring team members and supporting their development.


Skills & Experience Required

  • Experience leading or mentoring data engineering teams within a SaaS or product-led environment.
  • Deep hands-on knowledge of Databricks, Apache Spark, and Delta Lake, including large-scale or near real-time workloads.
  • Strong proficiency in Python, SQL, and cloud data services (Azure preferred, but any major cloud is fine).
  • Experience designing and operating end-to-end data and analytics architectures.
  • Good understanding of BI tooling (e.g. Power BI, Tableau) and analytics modelling.
  • Strong grasp of ETL/ELT orchestration, data quality frameworks, and observability tooling.
  • Familiarity with governance practices including lineage, cataloguing, and data integrity standards.
  • Awareness of data security, access controls, and compliance considerations.
  • Experience with CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, and cost-optimised cloud engineering.
  • Confident communicator, comfortable working with both technical and non-technical teams.
  • Naturally curious and motivated by delivering new insights and data products using modern tooling.


Why This Role?

  • Chance to lead and grow a talented team while remaining hands-on technically.
  • Ownership of a modern data platform with strong influence on architecture and future direction.
  • Opportunity to deliver customer-facing data products with real business impact.
  • Collaborative environment with the freedom to innovate and use emerging technologies.

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