Principal Data Engineer

We’re seeking a Principal Data Engineer to join a well-known aviation company to act as a technical leader for data engineering best practice. This is a senior, hands‐on role combining deep technical expertise with leadership, coaching, and influence across data delivery teams.

You’ll lead the development, operation, and continuous improvement of data platforms that underpin critical data products, ensuring they are secure, resilient, scalable, and cost‐effective. You’ll work closely with engineering, platform, architecture, and data stakeholders while guiding teams through the full data lifecycle using modern DevOps and agile principles.

Main Responsibilities:

• Lead the design, build, test, and deployment of secure, scalable data pipelines.
• Act as a hands‐on technical leader while coaching and mentoring senior data engineers.
• Own the operation of data products in production, including monitoring, alerting, incident response, and performance optimisation.
• Set and uphold engineering standards for data processing, documentation, testing, and automation.
• Embed DevOps, CI/CD, and agile delivery best practices across data teams.
• Collaborate with platform, architecture, security, and governance teams to ensure compliance with enterprise standards.
• Line manage Senior Data Engineers and contribute to capability building across the organisation.
• Participate in an on‐call rota to support critical data services.

Benefits:

• Hybrid working (approximately 3 days a week in the office)
• Salary up to £105,000 + 15% bonus
• 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays
• Competitive pension from 7% employer contributions
• Staff discounts and much more

Requirements:

• Leadership experience
• Strong SQL development expertise.
• Extensive experience with cloud‐native data ingestion, processing, and storage technologies.
• Hands‐on experience with modern data platforms (e.g. Snowflake, AWS‐based services, dbt, or similar PaaS/SaaS tools).
• Proven experience operating and supporting production data systems at scale.
• Strong understanding of data modelling, optimisation, and performance tuning.
• Deep knowledge of data security, access control, and information security principles.
• Experience working in agile teams with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices.

For more information and immediate review, please apply now!