Principal Data Engineer

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London / £85000 - £97500 annum

INFO

Salary
SALARY:

£85000 - £97500

Location

LOCATION

London

Job Type
JOB TYPE

Permanent

Principal Data Engineer
Salary: £97,000 + 15% bonus
Location: Central London, 2 days in office

We're hiring on behalf of our client, a global leader in personalised photo products, for an experienced Principal Data Engineer to join their UK data & ML team. This is a senior hands-on leadership role driving data platform strategy and engineering standards as they evolve toward decentralised data and ML adoption.

Role overview:
You'll play a central role in re-architecting and scaling their data platform to meet growing business and customer needs. This includes building robust, observable data pipelines, ensuring data trustworthiness, and mentoring a team of engineers while collaborating closely with Product, Ops, and Marketing stakeholders.

Key responsibilities:

  • Lead design and build of scalable, cloud-native data solutions with best-in-class governance and observability
  • Define technical principles and data engineering standards across distributed teams
  • Coach data and analytics engineers on SDLC best practices (CI/CD, testing, versioning)
  • Contribute to strategic planning and technical roadmaps in collaboration with product and engineering leads
  • Influence cross-functional stakeholders on architecture and implementation trade-offs
  • Ensure data is reliable, timely, and actionable for operational and ML-driven use cases

About you:

  • Strong background in software and data engineering leadership
  • Proficient in Python, SQL, and modern ELT practices (e.g. dbt, Fivetran, Airflow)
  • Deep knowledge of data warehousing (Snowflake), AWS services (e.g. Lambda, Kinesis, S3), and IaC (Terraform)
  • Experienced in building data platforms with a focus on governance, reliability, and business value
  • Comfortable driving architectural conversations and mentoring engineers across disciplines
  • Advocate for decentralised data models, such as data mesh

Nice to have:

  • Experience with data quality tools (e.g., Monte Carlo)
  • Knowledge of data security and compliance
  • Previous work in e-commerce or consumer tech

This is a chance to shape the next generation of data systems powering personalised customer experiences at scale - while working in a people-first, purpose-driven culture.

CONTACT

Michael Bellchambers

Senior Recruitment consultant

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