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# Principal Data Engineer

- **Company:** Chroma
- **Location:** Manchester, UK
- **Salary:** £70,000.0 - £85,000.0
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Sql Data Warehouse, Artificial Intelligence, Business Analytics Applications, BigQuery, Code Review, Continuous Integration, Data as a Services, Python (Programming Language), Machine Learning, Operational Databases, Performance Tuning, Standard Sql, SQL Databases, Kubernetes, Infrastructure Automation Frameworks, Data Management
- **Published:** October 24, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.adzuna.co.uk/jobs/details/5939324604

## About the Role

* Strong SQL and Python, building tested, maintainable production pipelines and data services.
 * Hands-on experience with a cloud data warehouse, dbt (or equivalent) and workflow orchestration, including incremental loading, safe reruns and performance tuning.
 * Data modelling for analytics and BI: dimensional design, semantic layers and well-documented shared datasets.
 * Ownership of a production data platform on a major cloud: deployment, infrastructure as code, permissions, monitoring, incident recovery and cost.
 * Sound security and data privacy practice, including GDPR and least-privilege access.
 * Turning stakeholder needs into a prioritised backlog, and reconciling figures where finance reporting depends on them.
 * Line management or mentoring of engineers, and technical leadership through code review and clear documentation.
 * Experience with modern cloud data platforms, orchestration tooling, infrastructure as code and analytics platforms.

Desirables

 * GCP experience with BigQuery, Composer and Cloud Run or Cloud Functions, including cost optimisation.
 * Airbyte or similar ingestion tools, CDC, Kubernetes and data observability tools such as Elementary.
 * Experience working with data scientists to put ML models or pipelines into production.

## Description

As the Principal Data Engineer, you'll own all data platforms while staying hands-on in the code. You'll work alongside Engineering and AI/Data Science, lead and develop the data team and turn business needs into a realistic plan.

 * Own the data platforms: Build and run ingestion, orchestration, the BigQuery warehouse, DBT tooling and Python data services on GCP, including CI/CD, infrastructure as code, access and cloud costs.
 * Keep data reliable: Set freshness and recovery targets for critical data, own alerting and incident response, and make backfills and reruns safe.
 * Model data for the business: Design layered warehouse models, from staging to dimensional marts.
 * Partner across teams: Work alongside Engineering and AI/Data Science to provide the data they need, and fix data issues at source.
 * Plan the work: Turn business and analytics requests into one prioritised backlog and roadmap.
 * Set the engineering standard: Review SQL, Python and dbt code, keep tests and contracts strong and make every production change testable and reversible.
 * Lead and develop the team: Line-manage and mentor members of the data team, through regular 1:1s, coaching, code review and career development.