Lead Data Engineer

TIP Data & Analytics drives meaningful impact through data and technology. We build resilient, scalable, and secure platforms, pipelines, and applications that power data-driven decision-making for internal and external stakeholders. Our agile team thrives on solving complex problems and building modern, cloud-native solutions. Reporting to the Group Data & Analytics Director, the Lead Data Engineer owns the design, development, and maintenance of our data engineering ecosystem - leading both the technical architecture and the standards behind it.

What You'll Be Doing

️ Lead design and delivery of scalable ETL/ELT pipelines on Databricks

️ Work within a medallion (bronze, silver, gold) architecture

️ Build metadata-driven, reusable pipeline frameworks

️ Manage and optimise Delta Lake and Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2

️ Set the bar for data quality, governance, and performance

️ Put monitoring, alerting, and observability in place to keep pipelines healthy

️ Build and maintain APIs and backend services in Python (FastAPI, Flask, or Django)

️ Ship reusable, production-grade components that other teams can build on

️ Support lightweight front-end tooling (React, Angular, or similar) where it's needed

️ Engineer our Azure-based lakehouse platform and associated services

️ Use Terraform and Azure DevOps for IaC, CI/CD, and deployment automation

️ Collaborate on integration with ERP and external systems (MS Dynamics a plus)

️ Mentor junior data engineers and grow the team's technical craft

️ Champion TDD, clean code, strong version control, and solid documentation

️ Partner with data scientists, analysts, and business teams to make data actionable

️ Stay close to emerging tools and trends, and bring the best of them in

️ Working closely with a supportive, hands-on team that values your input

️ Bachelor's in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Engineering, or related

️ 5+ years of hands-on data engineering experience

️ 1-2+ years in a lead or senior role

️ Strong Python - PySpark for pipelines, plus FastAPI, Flask, or Django

️ Solid SQL with a track record of optimising complex queries

️ Hands-on with Databricks, Delta Lake, and distributed data processing

️ Comfortable designing APIs and integration patterns (REST/GraphQL)

️ Experience with Azure Cloud, Terraform, and Azure DevOps

️ Nice-to-have: Apache Airflow or similar orchestration

️ Nice-to-have: Docker and Kubernetes

️ Nice-to-have: React, Angular, or Vue for data-facing tools

️ Nice-to-have: data modelling (Kimball, Data Vault, star/snowflake)

️ A natural leader who can guide, inspire, and grow engineers

️ Strong communicator across technical and business conversations

️ An engineering mindset focused on scalability, reusability, and maintainability

️ Collaborative and comfortable in an agile, fast-paced environment

️ Passionate about continuous learning and trying new things

️ A proactive mindset and a sense of ownership in your work

️ A good sense of humour - we work hard, but we like a laugh too

A top salary that is paid out every month

Attractive fringe benefits

Career and development opportunities - with us, you can always continue to grow

A lead role with real ownership - shape the architecture, the tooling, and the team culture

The freedom to apply both data engineering and software engineering skills across meaningful, high-impact products

Exposure to a modern Azure-based stack and best-in-class engineering practices

See why people love working at TIP and explore our benefits - learn more here!