An exciting opportunity to join the UK's leading entertainment marketing and advertising agency as a Data Engineer.
AKA is a leading entertainment media agency working with top-tier studios, streaming platforms, and content creators to connect stories with audiences in emotionally resonant and culturally relevant ways. We harness data, creativity, and behavioural insights to shape the future of entertainment.
Position Overview
Salary dependent on experience
We are seeking a Data Engineer to join our Data & Insights Team, initially leading the engineering build of Atlas, AKA's composable customer data platform (CDP). Reporting to the Analytics Engineering Manager and working closely with our Data Scientist, Project Manager & Development Teams you'll own the pipelines, infrastructure and data architecture that turn raw customer signals into a real-time, production-grade platform - from event streaming and identity resolution through to activation and reporting. This is a hands-on build role for someone who wants to own the engineering of a platform from foundations through to go-live, and who is comfortable using modern AI-assisted development tools to move fast without cutting corners.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead engineering delivery of Atlas: event streaming infrastructure, schema and taxonomy standards, and the Snowflake data warehouse and dbt transformation pipelines that sit at its core
- Design and build production identity resolution pipelines, working closely with the Data Scientist to translate matching logic and statistical models into robust, scalable production code
- Own ETL/ELT and reverse-ETL orchestration, ensuring reliable, well-governed data flow from source systems into the warehouse as sync frequency and volume increase
- Build and maintain the CI/CD pipelines and engineering practices (with the freelance Lead Developer) that support Atlas's modelling, forecasting and MMM automation
- Support productionisation of propensity, forecasting and MMM outputs (e.g. XGBoost, AutoGluon/Chronos, Meridian) built by the Data Scientist, ensuring they run reliably at scale
- Implement data governance, monitoring, alerting and incident runbooks appropriate to a real-time platform underpinning live client reporting
- Use AI-assisted development tools (e.g. Claude, Claude Code) as part of day-to-day engineering practice to accelerate build, testing and documentation
- Work with Account Management and client teams to translate engineering constraints and trade-offs into clear, non-technical guidance
- Contribute to phase-gated delivery milestones and support wider Data & Insights infrastructure beyond Atlas as priorities evolve
- Work within the Data Engineering team's standards and practices set by the Analytics Engineering Manager, contributing to shared documentation, code quality and orchestration standards across client data pipelines beyond Atlas
- Minimum Qualifications Degree in Computer Science or a related technical discipline, or equivalent professional experience
- 3+ years' experience as a Data Engineer, with strong, demonstrable proficiency in Python for building and maintaining data pipelines
- Experience with dbt or equivalent transformation frameworks, and with ETL/ELT tools such as Fivetran or Airbyte
- Experience designing and operating production data pipelines, including CI/CD practices for data and ML workflows
- Strong engineering fundamentals: version control, testing, monitoring and documentation
- Comfortable working directly with AI coding assistants (e.g. Claude, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot) as part of the standard development workflow
Nice to have
- Experience building or supporting identity resolution / customer data platform (CDP) infrastructure, including deterministic or probabilistic matching pipelines
- Experience with event streaming architectures (e.g. real-time ingestion, sub-second/sub-minute latency pipelines)
- Exposure to productionising machine learning or forecasting models (e.g. XGBoost, AutoGluon, Meridian, Robyn) built by data scientists Experience with reverse ETL and activation into media, CRM or ESP platforms
- Hands-on experience with Snowflake (warehouse design, performance and cost optimisation, security/governance)
- Data visualisation experience within Tableau or similar
- Experience working in or with entertainment/media companies
- Proficiency in using project management tools such as Asana
- Comfortable communicating technical concepts and trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders
Other Duties As Assigned
AKA is a fluid organisation and advertising is a fast moving and rapidly changing business; as such you may be required to undertake duties which are in line with the general purpose of this job description, but which are not specifically referred to. Some out of hours working (evenings and weekends) are occasionally required to ensure that time-sensitive social activity is delivered when required. This includes but is not limited to theatrical press nights, gallery openings, client and industry events etc.
Benefits
- 25 days holiday
- ‘Telus Health’ EAP scheme for you and your family. Giving you access to free independent advice on Life, Health, Family, Money and Work matters
- Holiday Buy Back
- Gym Discounts
- Friends & Family Theatre Ticket
- New Business Incentives
- Recruitment Incentives
- Pension Scheme
- Interest Free Travel Loan
- Ride to Work Scheme
- Childcare Vouchers
- Death in Service
- Flexible/Hybrid Working
- Critical Illness
- Enhanced Parental Leave