Senior Data Engineer (Data Business Partner)

• See your impact as you closely collaborate with the business to uplift our businesses’ data capability!
• Help shape an AI-ready data foundation that supports REA’s next phase of innovation!
• Permanent role based in Melbourne

We're REA
With bold and ambitious goals, REA Group is changing the way the world experiences property. No matter where you're at on your property journey, we're here to help with every step - whether that's finding or financing your next home.

Our people are the key to our success. At the heart of everything we do, is a thriving culture centred around high performance and care. We are purpose driven and collaborative, which drives innovation and our ability to make a real impact. As such, we’re proud to have been named one of Australia’s Best Workplaces four times since 2021 — including third place in 2025 — plus Best Workplace for Women in 2023 and Best Workplace in Technology in 2024 and 2025. These listings are testament to every person who helps make REA a great place to work.

Where the team fits in

This role sits within the Data Mesh Enablement Squad, a cross-functional squad focused on enabling data domains to own, govern and productise their data. The squad's mission is to make data mesh real at REA by embedding ownership, data-as-a-product thinking and federated governance so data domains can deliver trusted, AI-ready data products at scale. This team sits within Launchpad, which empowers REA with great technology, including a market-leading data platform and data management capability.

What the role is all about

This is not a typical Senior Data Engineer role. Your engineering skills will be used as a tool for enablement and scale; initially emphasising coaching, pairing and working alongside teams, and over time increasingly applying hands‑on engineering as the data domain maturity grows to help build and scale healthy data products. You will:

• Partner closely with Data Domain Owners and Data Product Owners to embed ownership, uplift data operating practices, act as the first point of contact for data management guidance, and build trusted relationships that enable early and proactive engagement.
• Embed enterprise data standards, guardrails and data‑as‑a‑product practices in ways that enable delivery, translating governance, privacy and security requirements into practical guidance and escalating only when issues cannot be resolved locally.
• Apply, monitor and remediate data health within data domains by improving quality, reliability and observability, identifying recurring issues and root causes, supporting remediation, and increasing visibility of data health at data domain and data product levels.
• Coach Data Product Owners and teams in data‑as‑a‑product thinking, support definition and documentation, and help domains manage data products across their full lifecycle from discovery to scale and retirement.
• Uplift data management capability through hands‑on coaching, pairing and working alongside teams, strengthening understanding of data ownership and accountability, and sharing patterns and best practices across the Data Business Partner network.
• Capture raw signals from data domains (pain points, friction, unmet needs), translate these into structured feedback for the Data Manager and data platform team, and validate that standards and platform capabilities work in real delivery contexts.
• Identify and enable cross‑domain data opportunities that increase enterprise value through reuse and connected data products, contribute to data communities of practice, and represent domain perspectives in enterprise forums when required.
• Track and communicate the value delivered through data domain partnership by measuring adoption, maturity progression, data health improvements and business outcomes.
• Maintain visibility of linkage between data products and business impact, use these insights to prioritise where partnership effort will have the greatest effect, and contribute to enterprise-level reporting on data mesh progress.

Who we’re looking for

• Strong hands‑on experience as a data engineer working with modern data platforms, pipelines, models and data quality practices.
• A solid understanding of data‑as‑a‑product concepts, including ownership, lifecycle management, data health, metadata and governance.
• Experience working closely with product managers and delivery teams to translate standards into real, production‑ready data products.
• A proven ability to coach, enable and uplift capability.
• Comfort operating in federated, influence‑based environments where ambiguity is expected.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with the ability to build trust and influence without authority.
• An enterprise mindset, able to spot cross‑domain opportunities that drive greater value.
• Clear communication skills, able to translate complex technical concepts into practical guidance for non-technical stakeholders.

The REA experience

The physical, mental, emotional and financial health of our people is something we’ll never stop caring about. This is a place to learn and grow.

Some of our Perks & Benefits include:

• A hybrid and flexible approach to working
• Flexible leave options including, birthday leave and purchase additional leave
• Flexible parental leave offering for primary and secondary carers
• Our Because We Care program offers employees volunteering leave, community grants, matched payroll giving and our Community Café donates 100% of revenue to charity
• Hackdays so you can bring your big ideas to life

Our commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

We are committed to providing a working environment that embraces and values diversity, equity and inclusion. We believe teams with diverse ideas and experiences are more creative, more effective and fuel disruptive thinking. If you've got the skills, dedication and enthusiasm to learn but don't necessarily meet every single point on the job description, please still get in touch.

Join our Talent Neighbourhood

Keen to be part of REA but didn't find a perfect match with this opportunity? Perhaps the timing isn't right? You should join our Talent Neighbourhood!

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