Lead Data Engineer

Overview

As Lead Data Engineer at Hippo, you will lead technical data work within a multi-disciplinary team to deliver secure, scalable data platforms. You act as a technical SME, guiding design, pipelines, and best practices while managing stakeholder expectations. You’ll drive delivery excellence, mentor engineers, and shape opportunities through technical bids and external representation. This role sits at the intersection of data, design, and engineering to create impact for public and private sector clients and advance Hippo’s data-driven mission.

Pay / Benefits

• Contributory Pension Scheme
• 25 Days Holiday
• Perkbox discounts
• Life assurance
• Volunteer days
• Cycle-to-work scheme

Responsibilities

• Act as a technical SME to ensure user-centred software built on business requirements
• Collaborate with colleagues to design and deliver solutions to complex client problems
• Design and manage software development and deployment pipelines, pre-empting bottlenecks
• Review and prioritise delivery team workload and realign with priorities
• Communicate progress clearly to internal and external stakeholders
• Build strong relationships with team and stakeholders to overcome challenges
• Lead recruitment and onboarding of engineers and support consultants’ development
• Lead on new business opportunities, writing technical bids and proposals
• Promote Hippo’s Data Herd externally via blogs, workshops, or conferences

Key requirements

• Python experience and at least one other core language
• SQL and relational databases
• Cloud platform experience (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
• Snowflake and dbt experience
• Experience with data formats (CSV, JSON, XML)
• Proven ability to build reliable data pipelines
• Technical leadership on complex projects and stakeholder management
• Coaching and guiding others for optimal solutions
• Excellent communication across technical and non-technical audiences
• Agile and CI/CD practices
• Ability to define team working procedures and methodologies

• leadership
• communication
• stakeholder management
• Python
• SQL
• Snowflake