Principal Data Engineer

This is an opportunity to join a large-scale organisation undergoing an exciting transformation of its data capabilities. You’ll play a key role in shaping engineering standards, influencing technical direction, and leading the delivery of business-critical data products within a modern cloud environment., As a Principal Data Engineer, you will combine hands-on engineering with technical leadership, people management, and stakeholder engagement.

Specifically, you can expect to be involved in the following:

• Providing technical leadership across Data Engineering, Software Engineering, and DevOps practices
• Building, improving, and maintaining scalable data platforms and pipelines
• Working closely with engineering teams to establish best practices, standards, and delivery frameworks
• Troubleshooting complex technical challenges and helping unblock delivery teams
• Leading, coaching, and mentoring engineers to support their professional development
• Driving continuous improvement across data products, tooling, and engineering processes
• Collaborating with senior stakeholders to align technical solutions with business objectives
• Supporting the ongoing evolution of a modern cloud-based data ecosystem using AWS, Snowflake, and dbt
• Contributing to the operation, monitoring, optimisation, and reliability of production data systems

The successful Principal Data Engineer will have the following skills and experience:

• Strong commercial experience in Data Engineering and modern software engineering practices
• Expertise working with AWS cloud services
• Experience building and scaling solutions within Snowflake
• Strong knowledge of dbt and modern data transformation methodologies
• Excellent SQL and data modelling capabilities
• Experience with CI/CD, DevOps practices, testing, monitoring, and operational support
• Ability to lead technical discussions and influence engineering decisions across teams
• Experience managing, coaching, or mentoring engineers
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills
• Ability to thrive within large, complex organisational environments

They are a well-established UK organisation investing heavily in their data and technology landscape. Operating within a federated data model, they have embedded data teams across the business to drive innovation and commercial impact. Their engineering teams work with complex, high-volume datasets that directly support key business decisions and outcomes. You’ll join a collaborative environment where technical excellence, continuous improvement, and knowledge sharing are actively encouraged. This is a role with genuine influence and visibility across the wider organisation.