Principal Data Engineer

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Salary: Up to £125,000 per year

Car allowance: £6,000 per year

Bonus: Up to 25% discretionary bonus

Location: London or Leicester

Working arrangement: Hybrid – 2 days per week in the office

Start date: Flexible

Full-time | Permanent About the opportunity Via is partnering with a major UK consumer business looking for a Principal Data Engineer to provide technical and people leadership across its data engineering capability.

This is a senior role combining data architecture, engineering leadership, people development and hands-on technical problem solving.

You'll act as a key technical authority for a modern cloud-first data platform, helping shape its architecture while ensuring the business can deliver trusted, scalable and cost-effective data products.

The environment includes Snowflake, AWS and dbt, and you'll work closely with Data Engineering, Product, Enterprise Architecture and Technology leadership. What you'll be doing

Provide technical leadership across the data engineering function

Shape the architecture and evolution of a modern cloud-first enterprise data platform

Design scalable, reliable and cost-effective data solutions

Lead technical solution design across complex data initiatives

Work extensively with Snowflake, AWS and dbt

Guide the development of data pipelines and enterprise data products

Establish strong data modelling and engineering standards

Work across conceptual, logical and physical data modelling

Ensure technical solutions align with wider data and technology strategy

Identify and address technical debt across core data platforms

Monitor cloud and platform consumption and identify opportunities to optimise costs

Own technical risks and issues across projects and programmes

Support the resolution of service and production issues across the data ecosystem

Provide estimates and technical input into engineering and product planning

Mentor and develop Lead Data Engineers

Support the development of the wider Data Engineering team

Contribute to recruitment, onboarding, performance and career development

Work closely with Product, Architecture and Technology teams

Evaluate emerging technologies and introduce relevant engineering practices

What we're looking for

Significant experience in senior or principal-level data engineering

Strong technical leadership experience

Extensive experience designing and developing modern cloud data platforms

Strong Snowflake experience, or significant experience with comparable modern cloud data platforms

Strong AWS experience

Experience with services such as S3, Lambda, SQS, Kinesis or Firehose

Strong dbt experience

Excellent SQL skills

Programming experience with Python, Node or another relevant language

Extensive data modelling experience

Strong understanding of dimensional modelling

Experience designing scalable data pipelines and data products

Infrastructure-as-code experience, ideally Terraform

Good understanding of CI/CD and modern engineering practices

Experience with GitHub, GitLab or similar development tooling

Strong understanding of cloud architecture and platform design

Experience managing technical risk and making complex engineering decisions

Strong stakeholder management and communication skills

Experience coaching and mentoring technical colleagues

Experience developing senior engineers and engineering capability

Useful additional experience

Power BI or ThoughtSpot

Automated testing and data quality practices

Cloud consumption and cost optimisation

Vendor management

Enterprise-scale data environments

Technical recruitment and talent development

You don't need experience with every individual technology listed. We're particularly interested in experienced Data Engineering leaders who combine strong cloud architecture and modern data stack knowledge with the ability to develop engineers and influence technical strategy. Why apply?

Salary up to £125,000

£6,000 annual car allowance

Up to 25% discretionary bonus

ShareSave scheme

Hybrid working with 2 days per week in London or Leicester

Private healthcare

Pension

Annual leave

Principal-level technical ownership and influence

Work with Snowflake, AWS and dbt at enterprise scale

Shape the future architecture of a major cloud data platform

Significant technical leadership responsibility

Opportunity to develop and mentor experienced Data Engineers

Strong learning and development opportunities

With the £6,000 car allowance and maximum discretionary bonus, the total potential annual cash package can exceed £160,000, alongside the ShareSave scheme and wider benefits.