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Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Data Lead - **Company:** The Wave - **Location:** London, UK - **Experience:** Expert - **Salary:** £100,000.0 - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** FactSet, Artificial Intelligence, Web Scraping, Cursor (Graphical User Interface Elements), Python (Programming Language), SQL Databases, Large Language Models - **Published:** August 26, 2026 - **Apply:** https://www.collegerecruiter.com/job/2815088428-data-lead ## About the Role * Roughly 2-5 years working directly with data at a company where data is the core product - not as an analyst consuming clean datasets, but building them from messy, unstructured sources * Demonstrable obsession with data quality - you know what great data looks like because you've spent time making it from scratch * You go to the row level. A missing data point or unexplained anomaly bothers you until it's resolved - not flagged and forgotten * Genuinely AI-native: you've been using agentic tooling long enough to have opinions on it - Claude Code, Cursor, OpenAI Agents SDK or equivalent, used on daily basis * Python and SQL fluent - you've built and debugged pipelines, not just queried tables * Comfortable in the terminal, in codebases and in real-world messy data environments * Experience at a financial data provider (Bloomberg, Refinitiv, Preqin, FactSet etc.) or in quant/ESG research * You've built agents yourself - not just used them * Experience with LLMs in production / agentic workflow design * Web scraping and document parsing at scale * Experience in a small team (2-30 people) where you owned the whole function ## Description Job Title: Data Lead (fully hands-on, no management) Salary: up to ~£100k + profit share Equity: 0.75 - 1% Location: Old Street (4-5 office days/week) About the company This early stage start-up is processing hundreds of thousands of unstructured financial documents into clean, structured datasets for some of the world's largest financial institutions - producing the output of 50, with a team of 5. Forecasting £1.5m revenue within their first 12 months, they have immense potential - not based on hype or inflated valuations, but rather achieving mega productivity through intelligent application of AI agents. Their mid-term goal is ~£50m revenue with a sub-30 person team. What's in it for you? * Profit share. Cash in your account on a regular basis - not a promise of a huge payout IF the company succeeds and sells. About the role At most data companies, a dataset is the output of a large analyst team. Here, it's the output of a fleet of AI agents - directed by one person who stakes their reputation on it being right. That's this role. You're not downstream. You're not cleaning data someone else built. You start from the source - raw documents, filings, internet data - and you build the dataset. You're the reason institutional clients - banks, hedge funds, investment firms - trust the data. AI agents do the extraction. You direct them, interrogate the output, catch what they miss and encode your judgement into validation systems that make the whole pipeline better over time. You'll also work directly with clients, explaining methodology to sophisticated buyers who need to understand what they're relying on. This isn't QA. It's the highest-ownership, most client-visible position in the company. Your name will be on the data. And for that, you'll have a very senior seat at the table. Must have requirements * Roughly 2-5 years working directly with data at a company where data is the core product - not as an analyst consuming clean datasets, but building them from messy, unstructured sources * Demonstrable obsession with data quality - you know what great data looks like because you've spent time making it from scratch * You go to the row level. A missing data point or unexplained anomaly bothers you until it's resolved - not flagged and forgotten * Genuinely AI-native: you've been using agentic tooling long enough to have opinions on it - Claude Code, Cursor, OpenAI Agents SDK or equivalent, used on daily basis * Python and SQL fluent - you've built and debugged pipelines, not just queried tables * Comfortable in the terminal, in codebases and in real-world messy data environments * Experience at a financial data provider (Bloomberg, Refinitiv, Preqin, FactSet etc.) or in quant/ESG research * You've built agents yourself - not just used them * Experience with LLMs in production / agentic workflow design * Web scraping and document parsing at scale * Experience in a small team (2-30 people) where you owned the whole function VISA sponsorship is available if needed (but you need to be already living in the UK) ## Related Videos - [From Messy Queries to Scalable Systems - How Data Engineering actually works](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100203-from-messy-queries-to-scalable-systems-how-data-engineering-actually-works) - [Fault Tolerance and Consistency at Scale: Harnessing the Power of Distributed SQL Databases](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1146-fault-tolerance-and-consistency-at-scale-harnessing-the-power-of-distributed-sql-databases) - [WeAreDevelopers LIVE – Web Scraping, Agents, Actors and more](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1764-wearedevelopers-live-web-scraping-agents-actors-and-more) - [How to scrape modern websites to feed AI agents](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1446-how-to-scrape-modern-websites-to-feed-ai-agents) - [Fault Tolerance and Consistency at Scale: Harnessing the Power of Distributed SQL Databases](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1520-fault-tolerance-and-consistency-at-scale-harnessing-the-power-of-distributed-sql-databases) - [Web Scraping, AI Agents, and the Future of Open Source - Kevin Lewis (Apify)](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1910-web-scraping-ai-agents-and-the-future-of-open-source-kevin-lewis-apify) ## Related Articles - [Graph and AI Trends 2026: Why Is AI Running but Not Yet Delivering?](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/680-graph-and-ai-trends-2026-why-is-ai-running-but-not-yet-delivering) - [Coffee with Developers - Maria Apazoglou - Making AI understandable for all in production](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/475-coffee-with-developers-maria-apazoglou-making-ai-understandable-for-all-in-production) - [Navigating the AI Shift](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/629-navigating-the-ai-shift) - [Making Data Warehouses Fast: A Developer’s Story](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/107-making-data-warehouses-fast-a-developer-s-story) - [How We Built a Worry-Free System That Runs for 10+ Years – And What We’d Do Again](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/751-how-we-built-a-worry-free-system-that-runs-for-10-years-and-what-we-d-do-again) - [The State of WebDev AI 2025 Results: What Can We Learn?](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/581-the-state-of-webdev-ai-2025-results-what-can-we-learn)