Location
London
Recruiter contact
Nikki George
About the company
Mott MacDonald is a global engineering, management, and development consultancy with over 20,000 employees across more than 50 countries and 140+ offices. We work across global industries, delivering work that defines the future and creates societal impact in the communities we serve. Our people power our performance, and we succeed when they do. We offer opportunities to collaborate, learn, and grow, with a culture that aims to empower, include, and value every individual. We are an employee-owned business focused on delivering value for clients, communities, and colleagues.
About the business unit
Mott MacDonald\'s support services drive the organisation’s efficiency. The team provides specialist advice, best practice, and technology to all areas of the business, designed for our global reach.
About the role
We are looking for a Principal Data Engineer to shape and implement our enterprise data architecture. This role combines deep technical expertise with stakeholder engagement and strategic thinking. You will help define and implement the data foundations that enable AI and analytics solutions across our global engineering, consulting, and infrastructure business.
You will work with cross-disciplinary teams to design scalable, secure, and interoperable data systems, establish our enterprise data ontology, and lead a small team of data engineers to turn the vision into reality.
What you\'ll do
- Enterprise data pipeline design & optimisation: Design and implement robust data pipelines to map structured and unstructured data from diverse sources into the enterprise vector store, ensuring high-quality embeddings for downstream retrieval and analysis.
- Ontology and data modelling: Lead the development of semantic data models and domain ontologies for data interoperability and traceability across the enterprise.
- Team leadership: Provide technical direction and mentoring for a small team of data engineers, supporting their growth while maintaining delivery velocity.
- Hands-on engineering: Build, evolve, and maintain scalable, secure data pipelines, APIs, and infrastructure in a modern cloud environment (Azure preferred).
- Stakeholder collaboration: Partner with technical and non-technical stakeholders across business units to gather requirements, align roadmaps, and communicate architecture decisions effectively.
- Governance & best practices: Promote robust data management, including lineage, observability, access control, and compliance with ethical data use.
- Innovation & standards: Stay ahead of industry trends in data architecture and metadata/semantic technologies, bringing them into practice where they add value.
- Enterprise data architecture: Collaborate with other architects to define and implement data architecture patterns across systems and domains to support analytical, AI, and operational use cases.
What you\'ll bring
- Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills able to bridge technical detail and business value.
- Experience in data engineering and architecture, ideally in complex or regulated enterprise environments.
- Expertise in designing and implementing scalable data architectures using cloud platforms (Azure preferred).
- Strong experience with data modelling and familiarity with data catalogues, knowledge graphs, or ontology tools.
- Proven experience managing or mentoring other data engineers.
- Solid programming skills in Python and SQL, and familiarity with Git, CI/CD workflows, Docker, and Kubernetes.
- Experience with data pipeline orchestration tools (e.g., Dagster) and modern data stack components.
Why join us
- Help shape the future of responsible, high-impact data and AI solutions in infrastructure, engineering, and consulting.
- Work alongside a mature team with a strong mandate to improve data engineering within our organisation.
- Shape our enterprise data engineering practice from the ground up and be a foundational contributor to our overall enterprise data architecture and strategy. This is a great opportunity to have major impact on the business. Lead and mentor within a collaborative, fast-growing team focused on innovation with purpose.
- Gain exposure to diverse, meaningful projects that create long-term social and environmental value.
We are actively recruiting a diverse workforce that reflects the communities we serve. We recognise that differences in ability, skills and experience are a strength and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds.
Accessibility and inclusion
Agile working
At Mott MacDonald, we believe it makes business sense for you and your manager to choose how you can work most effectively to meet client, team, and personal commitments. We offer a hybrid working policy that embraces well-being, flexibility, and trust.
Equality, diversity, and inclusion
We put equality, diversity, and inclusion at the heart of our business, promoting fair employment practices and ensuring equal opportunities for all. We encourage individual expression and strive to create an inclusive environment where everyone can contribute.
Accessibility
We want you to perform your best at every stage of the recruitment process. If you are disabled or need support to apply or attend an interview, please contact us and we will discuss how we can support you.
Benefits
Health and wellbeing
- Private medical insurance for all UK colleagues.
- Health cash plan to cover everyday health costs and treatments.
- Access to Peppy for menopause support for all UK colleagues.
- Wellbeing program including options for you and your family.
- Salary flex to opt into a wide range of health benefits, with possible family coverage.
Financial wellbeing
- We match employee pension contributions between 4.5% and 7%.
- Life assurance up to 4x basic salary, with option to increase to 6x.
- Income protection and return-to-work support for long-term illness or injury.
- Flexible benefits, including increased life cover, critical illness insurance, payroll saving, and will writing.
- Share in the company’s financial success through annual bonus schemes.
Lifestyle
- 33-35 days holiday per year, inclusive of public holidays, with the ability to buy or sell leave.
- Holiday entitlement increases to 35 days after 5 years of service.
- Employee saving schemes and retailer discounts.
Enhanced family and carers leave
- 26 weeks paid maternity and adoption leave, and two weeks paid paternity/partner leave.
- Shared parental leave up to 24 weeks at full pay.
- Up to five additional days leave for carers, with two paid.
Learning and development
- Annual professional subscription to a primary institution.
- Opportunities to develop technical and soft skills through mentoring, training, and self-development options.
Networks, communities, and social outcomes
- Join groups including Advanced Employee Networks for LGBTQ+, gender, race and ethnicity, disability, and parents/carers communities.
- Contribute to social outcomes in the community.
Apply now, or for more information about our application process, click here.
