Lead Data Engineer
Location: West Midlands | Hybrid 3 days per week onsite
The Role
Were looking for an experienced Lead Data Engineer to provide hands-on technical leadership within a data engineering team for a large retail brand. Youll lead the design and delivery of scalable, resilient data platforms and pipelines, set engineering standards, shape technical direction, and mentor engineers. Youll work closely with engineering, data and business stakeholders to solve complex problems and deliver high-quality data solutions.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the technical design and architecture of data pipelines, models and platform components.
- Establish standards across code quality, testing, security, observability and documentation.
- Drive technical discovery, design sessions, code reviews and resolution of technical debt.
- Design and deliver scalable batch and streaming data solutions.
- Mentor and coach engineers, supporting technical development and knowledge sharing.
- Make informed recommendations on tools, technologies and architectural approaches.
- Champion data quality, governance, security and compliance by design.
- Collaborate with data, product and technology teams to deliver joined-up solutions.
- Contribute to technical hiring, onboarding and team capability development.
What Youll Bring
- Strong senior/lead-level experience in data engineering.
- Deep experience with GCP, particularly BigQuery, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, Cloud Storage and Cloud Composer/Airflow.
- Advanced Python and SQL skills with a strong software engineering mindset.
- Proven experience building complex, scalable batch and event-driven pipelines.
- Strong data modelling experience, including dimensional modelling, Data Vault or equivalent.
- Experience with Dataform or similar SQL-based transformation tooling.
- Understanding of CI/CD, Git, automated testing and infrastructure as code, particularly Terraform.
- Experience implementing data quality, monitoring, observability and alerting.
- Ability to lead architecture decisions and communicate technical trade-offs clearly.
Desirable: Spark/DataProc, Looker or similar BI tools, analytics engineering, data mesh/platform architecture, GCP cost optimisation, and experience within retail or e-commerce environments.
Benefits
- Performance-related bonus
- Healthcare and employer pension contributions
- 25 days holiday plus birthday and bank holidays
- Flexible benefits, including EV, dental, cycle-to-work and holiday trading schemes
- Employee discounts and wellbeing support
- Enhanced family leave and life assurance
- Onsite gym membership, lunch and coffee facilities
- EV charging available
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