Data Engineer

Citywire; Greater London; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous holiday entitlement: 25–30+

Flexible working options

Well-being activities allowance

Eye-test and glasses allowance

Private pension scheme

Critical illness cover

Employee Assistance Programme

Cycle to work scheme

Techscheme: buy latest tech

Income protection after 2 years

Job summary

Citywire is hiring a Data Engineer to build pipelines and data models that power our data platform and AI systems. You will translate stakeholder requirements into robust, production-grade pipelines using dbt, Python, and AWS services, with a focus on observability and reliability.

You will work with the platform lead to design event-driven architectures, decompose legacy systems, and collaborate with analysts and data quality teams to deliver production-ready data solutions.

Qualifications

• Real dbt experience with production models, including tests and data contracts.
• Strong Python and SQL skills, with production-grade testing mindset.
• Practical AWS experience and ability to debug and deploy in AWS.
• Excellent CLI skills with containerized environments for debugging and local development.
• Pragmatic use of AI tooling with validation of generated code.

Responsibilities

• Translate analyst requirements and SQL into production-grade dbt models and data contracts.
• Decompose legacy performance engines into modern AWS event-driven pipelines and Spark-based processing.
• Collaborate with analysts and data quality teams from requirements through deployment.
• Ensure observability via structured logging, metrics, and alerting across pipelines.

Skills

dbt

Python

SQL

AWS

CLI

AI tooling

Data intuition

Tools

Spark on EMR

Prefect

OpenSearch

Job description

Citywire's data platform powers products across the company, both internal and external, from our industry ratings to our growing estate of production AI systems. We're hiring a Data Engineer to help build the pipelines and data models at the heart of it - taking requirements from stakeholder teams and turning them into tested, scheduled, monitored production systems.

This is a growth role by design. You'll work directly with, and be mentored by, the platform lead - on architecture, on production engineering discipline, and on working effectively with AI coding agents at production scale.

What you'll be doing:

• Production data modelling: Translate analyst requirements and SQL into robust, production-grade dbt models (source → warehouse → reporting layers). You'll own data contracts, documentation, testing, and scheduling, with orchestration managed via Prefect.
• Large-scale fund and manager performance computation: Help decompose a legacy performance engine into a modern, event-driven AWS architecture (EventBridge, SQS, Lambda, S3, RDS). You'll build parallel compute pipelines using Spark on EMR (no deep prior Spark experience needed, just a strong curiosity for distributed systems).
• Data models for AI systems: Partner with the Platform Lead to design, build, and maintain the data models powering our AI platform - spanning fund and share class data, clickstream interactions, and CRM and finance systems.
• Alerting and observability: Ensure operational health across all pipelines via structured logging, metrics, DLQ tracking, and purposeful alerting. We view observability as a core engineering practice and will support your growth in designing resilient event-driven systems.
• Work directly with the analyst team and the data quality team, from requirement through deployment.

What we're looking for:

• Real dbt experience: You've built and maintained models in a genuine project - incremental logic, tests, an understanding of why downstream consumers matter. It doesn't need to have been enormous; it needs to have been real. BigQuery experience is a plus; another warehouse is fine.
• Solid Python and SQL skills, with the instinct that code going to production deserves tests.
• Practical AWS Experience: You have hands-on experience deploying and debugging in AWS. You don't need to know every service we use on day one - we’ll teach you our specific stack.
• Strong CLI Skills: Proficient with terminal-driven workflows, containerized environments, and shell scripting for debugging, automation, and local development.
• Pragmatic AI Tooling: You leverage AI coding assistants to speed up your workflow, but bring critical oversight to their output - reviewing, testing, and verifying generated code rather than shipping it on faith.
• Data Intuition & Rigor: You look beyond passing CI/CD checks. When a pipeline runs green but the outputs look off, you dig into the numbers, comparing runs, spotting unexpected anomalies, and validating the business logic behind the data.
• Accountability & Resilience: You take pride in what you build. You learn from production mistakes, own the outcome, and prefer holding accountability for your own pipelines over handing off maintenance to someone else.
• Collaborative Communication: You can sit side-by-side with analysts, understand the intent behind their SQL, and partner with them to translate complex business logic into efficient, production-ready solutions.

Nice to Have (Genuinely learnable here - we will train you):

• Frameworks & Tools: Spark on EMR, Prefect (or experience transferring from Airflow/Dagster), OpenSearch.
• Architecture: Event-driven design patterns, SurrealDB or graph data stores.
• Domain Knowledge: Financial services or asset management context.

Meet Citywire

We cover - and connect - all sides of the $100 trillion global asset management industry - through our news, events and insights.

At Citywire, we uphold a culture rooted in honesty, integrity, and fairness, where every voice is valued and heard. Our culture promotes constructive dialogue and collaboration on a global scale.

Join the team at the Heart of Wealth.

Our perks:

• Generous holiday entitlement: Start with 25 days per annum, increasing to 28 days after three years' service, and 30 days after five years' service, in addition to bank holidays.
• Flexible working options.
• Annual allowance for well-being activities or gym memberships, with assistance available for monthly or annual costs.
• Eye-test and glasses allowance.
• Competitive private pension scheme.
• Critical illness cover and group life assurance from day one of employment.
• Well-being support: Access to an independent Employee Assistance Programme, available 24/7.
• Cycle to work scheme and annual travel card loans.
• Techscheme: Purchase the latest tech through our employer scheme, spreading the cost over 12 months with National Insurance savings.
• After two years of continuous service, access group income protection, private medical, and dental insurance.

Citywire is an equal opportunities employer.