Lead Data Engineer - Start-Up / Scale-up experience required

Lead Data Engineer (Permanent, London on-site 4 Days) - Sponsorship is not available for this role

A high-growth AI software company is looking for a Lead Data Engineer to own and scale the data foundations behind an AI-driven operations platform used by property teams. This is a hands-on, high-ownership role where you'll define the data architecture, set engineering standards and build systems that power product analytics and modern AI capabilities. Start-up or Scale-up experience required coupled with a computing degree from a Russell Group university.

What you'll do

Architect and build scalable data pipelines and distributed data systems

Design ingestion, transformation and storage patterns for operational and AI workloads

Deliver batch and real-time/streaming pipelines

Build and optimise vector search and retrieval pipelines that support AI features

Implement monitoring, observability and data quality frameworks

Drive security, reliability and governance across the data layer

Partner closely with backend and AI engineers to support training, inference and product delivery

Influence technical direction and help shape the future data team as the company scales

What we're looking for

Demonstrable experience in data engineering or backend engineering with proven architecture ownership

Start-Up / Scale-Up experience

Russell Group university degree in a computing subject

Good level of Python engineering skills

Strong relational database experience (PostgreSQL preferred) including performance and query optimisation

Exposure to NoSQL systems

Comfortable building from scratch in a fast-moving, product-led environment

Experience with vector databases and vector search in modern AI systems

Desirable: Spark, Airflow, Kafka, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, event-driven architectures

Cloud experience (AWS, GCP or Azure), GCP is a plus

Why join

High impact and ownership as an early senior hire

Work with a strong engineering team on real AI product challenges

Competitive salary

If you are an experienced Data Engineer seeking a challenging opportunity to lead and innovate within a transformative AI company, we encourage you to apply now and become a vital part of our client's mission.

Unfortunately sponsorship is not available for this role.