Senior Data Engineer

KDR Talent Solutions
Oxford
1 week ago
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Senior Data Engineer | Oxford/ London, (Hybrid) (Innovative research environment)

(highly technical – multiple levels available) up to £150,000 per annum

The Company

Our client is an ambitious research and technology organisation operating at the intersection of AI, scientific computing and large-scale data engineering.

They are building one of the most advanced data platforms in the UK, designed to support AI training, complex research workflows and real-world scientific applications across areas such as healthcare, robotics, climate science and advanced research.

With long-term funding, serious compute capability and teams made up of engineers, scientists and ML specialists from leading global organisations, they are tackling problems typically seen in frontier AI labs rather than traditional enterprise environments.

A significant portion of the data powering their systems comes from complex real-world sources - experimental platforms, scientific instruments, imaging systems, genomics pipelines and sensor-driven environments.

This is a mission-driven organisation with genuine technical depth and a very high engineering bar.

The Role

As a Senior / Forward Deployed Data Engineer, you’ll sit at the interface between the core data platform and research teams, working directly with scientists, engineers and domain specialists to turn raw research data into reliable, scalable data systems that power AI and scientific discovery.

You will work on:

  • Partnering closely with research and engineering teams across domains such as healthcare, robotics, agriculture and AI
  • Building robust, reproducible data pipelines to support scientific research and model training
  • Designing ingestion, curation and transformation pipelines for complex multimodal datasets including text, images, structured data and scientific formats
  • Working with high-throughput data systems and large-scale distributed compute environments
  • Supporting datasets used for AI training by ensuring they are structured, versioned, reproducible and production-ready
  • Deploying and packaging data workflows in research environments using containers
  • Scaling data processing using distributed compute frameworks and cloud infrastructure
  • Ensuring strong data governance including lineage, version control, auditability and reproducibility
  • Collaborating with scientists to translate complex research workflows into scalable engineering systems
  • Contributing to a strong engineering culture focused on testing, maintainability and system design
  • This is a highly collaborative role combining deep technical data engineering with close interaction with research teams and applied science environments.

Your Experience

  • You’re an experienced Senior Data Engineer who enjoys solving complex problems and working at the intersection of engineering, research and real-world data.
  • Strong programming skills in Python and solid SQL for large-scale data workloads
  • Experience building and operating distributed data systems in production environments
  • Experience working on cloud infrastructure and Linux-based systems
  • A systems mindset - thinking about performance, reliability and long-term maintainability
  • Experience designing pipelines that prioritise reproducibility, version control and strong data management practices
  • Comfort working with complex datasets including scientific, experimental or multimodal data
  • Experience collaborating closely with researchers, ML engineers or scientific teams
  • Domain experience in one or more of the following areas would be highly beneficial:
  • Clinical or healthcare data engineering
  • Real-time data pipelines from sensors, instruments or automated systems
  • Large-scale scientific or experimental data platforms

Why Join?

  • Highly competitive salary up to £150,000 depending on experience
  • Annual bonus + travel allowance
  • Flexible hybrid working (Oxford & London offices, typically 3 days per week)
  • Work on one of the most technically ambitious data platforms in the UK
  • Direct contribution to AI and scientific research with real-world impact
  • Strong engineering culture with long-term roadmap and funding stability
  • Opportunity to work closely with scientists solving frontier research challenges

*This client has a high interest in candidates with a background in either Genomics, Clinical Healthcare or Autonomous systems.

if you think it looks interesting please click apply.


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