Contract Data Engineer (Azure) - Agile IT Team

Azure Data Engineer (Contract – Day Rate) - Mid-Level | Azure | Data Lakehouse | ETL Location:  Central London Day Rate: £375 - 425 per day (Outside IR35) Working Patterns:  Hybrid, London Interviews:  2 stage processOpus are supporting a global insurance organisation seeking an Azure Data Engineering contractor to join its core IT function on a day-rate basis. This role is part of a wider data platform capability build and offers the opportunity to bring a fresh, pragmatic perspective into an established Azure environment.The team is currently top-heavy and are deliberately looking to strengthen the mid-level layer - someone highly technical, hands-on, and confident shaping how data is ingested, optimised and structured across Azure.The Role:

• Join a central IT delivery team, reporting into the agile delivery team. 
• Act as a replacement within the existing data engineering function
• Focus on incoming data design, Azure optimisation, and ETL best practice
• Work closely with senior engineers while contributing independent technical thought and challenge

Key Responsibilities:

• Design, build and maintain ETL pipelines in Azure for structured and semi-structured data
• Optimise data ingestion patterns feeding into a Data Lakehouse architecture
• Improve efficiency, performance and scalability across Azure services
• Support platform-level decisions around how Azure is handled from a data perspective
• Collaborate within Agile delivery cycles (Scrum / Kanban environments)

Required Experience:

• Strong hands-on Azure data engineering experience (mid-level, but technically confident)
• Proven use of Azure for ETL (e.g. Azure Synapse, Data Factory, or similar tooling)
• Data Lakehouse experience is a must-have
• Solid SQL and data modelling fundamentals
• Experience working within an enterprise IT team (Lloyd's & London (Re)insurance, or Financial Services experience is preffered, but not essential) 
• Comfortable challenging existing approaches and offering fresh technical perspectives

Nice to Have

• Exposure to Databricks, PySpark or Python-based data processing
• Experience optimising legacy or sub-optimal Azure implementations
• Familiarity with Agile delivery frameworks

Please reach out to Adam Akhtar at Opus Recruitment for futher information -E: