Principal Data Engineer

Hays
Abingdon
3 months ago
Applications closed

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Your New Role

We're looking for an experienced Principal Data Engineer to lead the development and evolution of a modern enterprise data platform. This strategic, hands-on position involves architecting and optimising scalable data pipelines to support advanced analytics, AI/ML initiatives, and actionable insights across the organisation.You'll take full ownership of the Snowflake platform implementation and adoption, ensuring it becomes the central hub for trusted, secure, and high-performing data. Acting as the technical authority, you'll define best practices, establish governance frameworks, and mentor engineers and analysts to maximise platform value.This is an opportunity to shape the data landscape and deliver solutions that empower decision-making and innovation.
Key Responsibilities
Platform Leadership: Design, implement, and manage Snowflake as the enterprise data hub, ensuring scalability, security, and performance.
Data Architecture & Strategy: Define frameworks for ingestion, replication, storage, and transformation across diverse data sources.
Pipeline Development: Build efficient ELT pipelines using tools such as DBT and Python, integrating operational, financial, and network data.
Performance Optimisation: Configure Snowflake warehouses and partitioning strategies for cost efficiency and speed.
Governance & Compliance: Implement data quality, lineage, and access control aligned with regulatory and security standards.
Innovation: Drive adoption of advanced Snowflake features (Snowpark, Streams, Tasks, Secure Data Sharing) to enhance platform capabilities.
Mentorship: Guide and develop data engineers and analysts in best practices and technical excellence.
Stakeholder Collaboration: Work closely with business teams to deliver scalable data products for analytics and emerging ML initiatives.
Monitoring & Reliability: Establish monitoring, alerting, and cost management strategies to ensure resilience and predictable spend.

What You'll Need to Succeed
Proven experience designing and delivering cloud-based data platforms at scale (Snowflake preferred).
Expertise in cloud data architecture, including data lakes, lakehouses, and warehouse design.
Advanced proficiency in SQL, DBT, and Python for ELT workflows.
Hands-on experience with Snowflake features: schema design, micro-partitioning, warehouses, tasks, streams, and Snowpark.
Familiarity with replication and transformation tools (Airbyte, DBT) and cloud ecosystems (AWS preferred).
Strong understanding of data governance, metadata, and lineage frameworks.
Experience enabling BI tools (e.g., Power BI) through Snowflake data models.
Desirable: Experience in data migration, change management, and enterprise rollout of modern data platforms.

What you need to do now
If you're interested in this role, click 'apply now' to forward an up-to-date copy of your CV, or call us now.
If this job isn't quite right for you, but you are looking for a new position, please contact us for a confidential discussion about your career.
Hays Specialist Recruitment Limited acts as an employment agency for permanent recruitment and employment business for the supply of temporary workers. By applying for this job you accept the T&C's, Privacy Policy and Disclaimers which can be found at hays.co.uk

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