Principal Data Engineer

Principal Data Engineer

Location: London (Hybrid) Contract Type: Contract (Inside IR35) Day Rate: Up to £650 per day Duration: Initial contract through December with potential extension Start Date: ASAP Principal Data Engineer | Financial Services Transformation Programme We are seeking an experienced Principal Data Engineer to join a major financial services transformation programme focused on delivering a modern, cloud-based data platform.

This is an excellent opportunity for a senior data engineering professional who combines deep technical expertise with strong stakeholder engagement skills. You will play a key role in shaping data solutions, providing technical leadership, and remaining hands-on in the delivery of business-critical data initiatives.

Working closely with Data Architects, Product Owners, business stakeholders, and engineering teams, you will help design and implement scalable data platforms, establish engineering best practices, and support the migration of legacy data assets to a modern cloud architecture. Key Responsibilities

Lead the design and delivery of scalable, cloud-native data solutions.

Translate business requirements into practical and effective data engineering solutions.

Provide technical leadership and mentoring to Data Engineers and delivery teams.

Remain hands-on with the design, development, testing, and deployment of data pipelines and data products.

Design and implement modern Lakehouse architectures leveraging Databricks and AWS services.

Establish engineering standards, development frameworks, and data quality controls.

Collaborate with Data Architects to define and implement target-state platform architectures.

Drive legacy-to-cloud migration initiatives and modernisation programmes.

Optimise platform performance, reliability, and operational efficiency.

Participate in architecture reviews, governance forums, and technical design workshops.

Champion engineering excellence and continuous improvement across teams.

Act as a trusted advisor to both technical and business stakeholders.

Required ExperienceTechnical Leadership & Delivery

Proven experience as a Principal Data Engineer, Lead Data Engineer, or Senior Data Engineer within large-scale enterprise environments.

Experience delivering complex cloud transformation and data modernisation programmes.

Strong stakeholder management and communication skills.

Ability to influence technical direction while remaining hands-on with delivery.

Experience working across Architecture, Engineering, Product, and Business teams.

Data Engineering & Platforms Strong hands-on experience with:

Databricks

Delta Lake

Unity Catalog

dbt

Spark / PySpark

Data pipeline development and optimisation

Lakehouse architectures

ETL/ELT frameworks

Enterprise data platform implementation

Cloud Technologies (AWS) Experience with:

Amazon S3

AWS Glue

Apache Airflow

IAM

AWS Lambda (desirable)

Data Architecture & Modelling Knowledge and practical experience of:

Data Vault

Kimball methodology

Dimensional modelling

Data warehousing principles

Enterprise data architecture concepts

Modernisation & Migration Experience Experience delivering migrations from legacy platforms such as:

Teradata

Hadoop

Oracle

SAS

Preferred Experience

Financial Services or Banking sector experience.

Experience working within regulated environments.

Large-scale cloud transformation programmes.

Agile delivery methodologies.

Working alongside Data Product Owners and Data Architects.

Data governance and metadata management frameworks.

CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and DevOps practices within data environments.

Skills & Attributes

Strong hands-on engineering capability.

Excellent consultative and stakeholder management skills.

Ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences.

Comfortable operating across strategic and technical discussions.

Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.

Delivery-focused with a commitment to quality and best practice.

Passion for mentoring and developing engineering talent.

Able to thrive in fast-paced transformation programmes.

What's on Offer?

Competitive day rate of up to £650 per day.

Opportunity to work on a high-profile financial services transformation programme.

Hybrid working arrangement.

Potential contract extension beyond the initial term.

Significant influence on the design and implementation of a modern enterprise data platform.