Data Platform Engineering Manager

NatWest Group; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

NatWest Group is seeking a Data Platform Engineering Manager to own the data ecosystem, guiding a high‑performing squad to architect and maintain a platform that enables business units to ingest, manage and leverage data for strategic needs.

Daily you’ll mentor engineers, define the strategic roadmap for the data platform, emphasize self‑service, reliability, security and scalability, and collaborate with Product, Architecture, Analytics, Operations and Security to deliver secure data solutions.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading data mesh architectures with business impact.
• Hands-on coding in Python or Go.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS/GCP) and data tooling.
• Strong understanding of platform engineering, CI/CD and SRE.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor and grow a data engineering team.
• Define strategic vision and roadmap for the data platform.
• Evaluate architectural designs for long-term goals, security and scalability.
• Embed best practices for self-service platform engineering, CI/CD and SRE.
• Collaborate with Product, Architecture, Analytics, Operations and Security teams.

Skills

Data mesh architecture

Python

Go

AWS

GCP

Kafka

CI/CD

SRE

Datadog

OpenTelemetry

Tools

Terraform

Crossplane

Datadog

OpenTelemetry

Job description

Join us as an Engineering Manager

• Identifying and solve engineering-wide challenges as they appear
• We’ll look to you to deliver exceptionally high-quality work and empower engineers to make a big impact
• Investing in NatWest Boxed’s overall platform architecture
• Ensuring the security of our systems and working practice

What you’ll do

As a Data Platform Engineering Manager, you will take ownership of our data ecosystem, guiding a high-performing engineering squad to architect and maintain a robust platform that empowers every business unit to effectively ingest, manage, and leverage data for varied strategic requirements.

Day-to-day, you’ll be:

• Leading, mentoring and growing a high-performing team of data engineers, shaping our hiring strategy and fostering a culture of innovation and ownership
• Defining the strategic vision and technical roadmap for our data platform, focusing on self-service, reliability, scalability, security, and user experience
• Critically evaluating architectural proposals and technical designs from the team, ensuring alignment with long-term business goals, platform vision, architecture and security
• Championing engineering excellence by embedding best practices for self-service platform engineering, CI/CD, and SRE, while owning the operational health of our platform through SLOs
• Collaborating with Product, Architecture, Analytics, Operations and Security teams to deliver a secure, robust platform that enables all groups to easily manage data within defined standards
• Driving projects from inception to delivery, taking into consideration the needs of your customers whilst fitting into the wider Platform strategy
• Engaging with clients and vendors on integration patterns and implementation

The skills you'll need

We’re looking for someone with proven experience leading, managing, and scaling high-performing data mesh architectures as well as the ability to connect technical architecture decisions directly to business outcomes; you understand the cost, risk, and revenue impact. It would be great if you had experience with FinTech / Banking and hands-on experience with programming languages such as Python or Go.

You’ll also have:

• A strong technical background in cloud-native technologies (e.g., AWS, GCP), event streaming (Kafka), and data-mesh tooling
• Deep understanding of modern platform engineering principles, including infrastructure-as-code (e.g., Terraform, Crossplane), data streaming platforms, data transformation, observability (e.g., Datadog, OpenTelemetry) and self-service platform design
• A strategic mindset with experience designing, building, and operating scalable, distributed systems in a regulated environment
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences internal and external