Lead Data Engineer

Salt Digital Recruitment; Dubai; On-site; AED 334,800 - 446,400; Full time

Job summary

Salt Digital Recruitment is seeking a Lead Data Engineer in Dubai to design and build scalable data pipelines that deliver trusted datasets for BI, AI, and operational use. The ideal candidate will have over 5 years of experience and a solid understanding of Azure data services.

Responsibilities include building pipelines, implementing data quality checks, and monitoring performance. A Bachelor's in Computer Science is required. The role offers opportunities to work with modern data technologies.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in Data Engineering.
• Experience with Azure data services.
• Familiarity with CI/CD & container basics.

Responsibilities

• Build pipelines across bronze, silver & gold layers.
• Implement data quality checks, contracts & schema validation.
• Monitor pipeline health, performance & cost to meet SLAs.

Skills

Strong SQL

Data modeling (dimensional/data vault)

Proficiency in Python

Hands-on with Databricks

Hands-on with Spark

Hands-on with Delta Lake

Hands-on with dbt

Education

Bachelor's in Computer Science

Tools

Azure Data Factory

Kafka/Event Hubs

CI/CD (Azure DevOps/GitHub)

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

My client is looking for a Lead Data Engineer to design and build scalable data pipelines that deliver trusted, analytics‑ready datasets for BI, AI, and operational use cases across a hybrid environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Build pipelines across bronze, silver & gold layers (Databricks, Spark, dbt)
• Implement data quality checks, contracts & schema validation
• Apply governance (catalog, lineage, RBAC, metadata)
• Deliver curated datasets, features & embeddings for AI/BI
• Monitor pipeline health, performance & cost to meet SLAs

Tech Stack

• Databricks
• Spark
• Delta Lake
• dbt
• Azure Data Factory
• Kafka/Event Hubs
• CI/CD (Azure DevOps/GitHub)

Governance & Ops

• Enforce data contracts, lineage & cataloging
• Apply masking, tokenisation & access controls (PII/PHI)
• Build observable pipelines with alerts, dashboards & runbooks
• Optimize performance (partitioning, caching, cost efficiency)

Requirements

• 5+ years in Data Engineering
• Strong SQL, data modeling (dimensional/data vault)
• Proficiency in Python
• Hands‑on with Databricks, Spark, Delta Lake & dbt
• Experience with Azure data services (ADF, ADLS, Key Vault)
• Familiarity with CI/CD & container basics (Docker/Kubernetes)

Nice to Have

• Streaming (Kafka/Event Hubs) & CDC (GoldenGate)
• Catalog/lineage tools (Purview, OvalEdge)
• S3‑compatible storage (MinIO, VAST)
• Exposure to BI tools (Power BI)
• Healthcare standards (FHIR/MDR)

Education

Bachelor's in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.