Principal Data Engineer

Principal Data Engineer | Leicester (Hybrid, 3 days/week onsite) | £

You will be responsible for the technical direction, hands on delivery and continuous improvement of the modern data platform. Reporting to the CIO, the role will take ownership of the existing data solution and lead its development into a scalable, governed platform that supports reporting, analytics and AI.

This is a senior, hands on role for someone who is comfortable designing and building data solutions personally, rather than operating only at a strategic or management level. The role will work directly in the Microsoft Fabric toolset, covering data ingestion, engineering, lakehouse and warehouse design, analytics and the preparation of trusted data for AI and machine learning use cases.

The successful candidate will inherit a direct report and will be expected to develop both the platform and the capability of the team. Further team growth will be based on delivery priorities, demonstrated value and the maturity of the platform.

What you'll be doing:

• Designing and building a modern data platform in Azure Fabric, from ingestion through to a governed lakehouse/warehouse and on to analytics and AI enablement


• Implementing medallion architecture (bronze/silver/gold) as the core data model


• Setting technical direction as the senior technical owner of the data function


• Working closely with the CIO and business stakeholders to translate requirements into a scalable, governed platform


• Enabling downstream analytics and AI/ML use cases as the platform matures


• Leading and growing a small data engineering team over time

• Proven hands-on experience building modern cloud data platforms end to end; ingestion through to analytics/AI consumption, not just overseeing others doing it


• Strong Azure data engineering background: Data Factory, Synapse and/or Fabric, with solid SQL and pipeline/ETL-ELT fundamentals


• Direct experience implementing medallion or equivalent layered lakehouse architecture


• Comfortable being the most senior technical person in the room while still writing pipelines and making architectural decisions personally


• Some experience leading, mentoring or growing a data engineering team


• Strong stakeholder communication; confident with both technical and non-technical audiences

• Production experience specifically in Microsoft Fabric


• Power BI, particularly Direct Lake mode


• Python/PySpark


• Data governance or security experience


• Experience enabling AI/ML workloads from a data platform, not just BI

• Salary £80,000 - £90,000 plus bonus


• Leicester HQ, hybrid, 3 days/week onsite

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