Principal Engineer – Data & AI Platforms

Principal Engineer – Data & AI Platforms

London | Hybrid Working

Are you a highly experienced data engineering leader looking to shape the future of data, AI, and cloud platforms at enterprise scale?

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Principal Engineer to join a market-leading technology and media organisation, helping to define the next generation of data products, analytics capabilities, and AI-ready platforms that support millions of customers.

This is a senior technical leadership role where you'll operate at the intersection of architecture, engineering excellence, cloud technologies, and strategic business transformation. Working alongside architects, engineering leaders, product teams, and senior stakeholders, you will play a pivotal role in driving technical standards, mentoring engineering teams, and delivering scalable cloud-native data solutions that support critical business initiatives.

You'll be responsible for setting the technical direction for complex data platforms, championing engineering best practice, and helping build the foundations that enable advanced analytics, AI, and machine learning capabilities across the organisation.

Key responsibilities include:

• Providing technical leadership across multiple engineering teams, acting as a trusted expert and mentor

• Defining and guiding architecture for large-scale cloud-native data products and platforms

• Establishing engineering standards, development frameworks, and best practices across multiple squads

• Designing scalable, future-ready data solutions that support analytics, AI, and machine learning initiatives

• Driving adoption of modern engineering approaches, automation frameworks, and CI/CD pipelines

• Ensuring robust data quality, governance, testing, observability, and platform resilience

• Collaborating with architects, product leaders, and senior stakeholders to shape strategic roadmaps and technical direction

• Leading performance optimisation, platform scalability, and engineering maturity initiatives

• Acting as a bridge between engineering, architecture, and wider technology teams to ensure alignment across major programmes

Candidates should demonstrate:

• Significant experience in senior data engineering, platform engineering, or architecture leadership positions

• Deep expertise in cloud-based data platforms and distributed processing environments

• Strong experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Python, and modern software engineering practices

• Advanced SQL expertise, ideally including large-scale analytical environments such as BigQuery

• Experience designing enterprise-scale data architectures and data models

• Strong understanding of CI/CD, automation, testing frameworks, and engineering governance

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence both technical and non-technical stakeholders

• Experience leading engineering teams, mentoring technical talent, and driving technical excellence at scale

This role would particularly suit someone who enjoys combining hands-on technical expertise with strategic influence and leadership.

Why join?

You'll be joining an organisation that continues to invest heavily in technology, data, AI, and innovation. This is an opportunity to work on large-scale, high-impact platforms that support millions of customers while collaborating with some of the industry's most talented engineers, architects, and data specialists.

Alongside challenging and meaningful work, you'll benefit from a highly collaborative culture, excellent career development opportunities, flexible hybrid working, and a comprehensive benefits package.

Location: London

Working Pattern: Hybrid

Competitive salary & benefits

Please apply directly via LinkedIn