Head of Data & AI

Asset Resourcing; Leicester; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Leicester base role

Job summary

Asset Resourcing in the United Kingdom is seeking a hands-on leader to design and build a modern data platform on Azure Fabric. You will own end-to-end data ingestion, lakehouse architecture, and AI enablement, while mentoring a small team.

The role is hybrid in Leicester (3 days onsite) with a salary up to £100,000 plus bonus and significant technical scope. You will work directly with the CIO and stakeholders to translate requirements into scalable solutions, while staying close to the tooling

Qualifications

• Proven hands-on experience building modern cloud data platforms end to end.
• Strong Azure data engineering background, including Data Factory, Synapse and/or Fabric, with solid SQL and pipeline/ETL-ELT fundamentals.
• Direct experience implementing medallion or equivalent layered lakehouse architecture.
• Comfortable being the most senior technical person in the room while still writing pipelines and making architectural decisions personally.
• Some experience leading, mentoring or growing a data engineering team.
• Strong stakeholder communication, with confidence communicating with both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Production experience specifically in Microsoft Fabric is desirable.
• Power BI experience, particularly Direct Lake mode, is desirable.
• Python/PySpark experience is desirable.
• Data governance or security experience is desirable.
• Experience enabling AI/ML workloads from a data platform, not just BI, is desirable.

Responsibilities

• Design and build a modern data platform in Azure Fabric, from ingestion through to a governed lakehouse/warehouse and on to analytics and AI enablement.
• Implement medallion architecture (bronze/silver/gold) as the core data model.
• Set technical direction as the senior technical owner of the data function.
• Work closely with the CIO and business stakeholders to translate requirements into a scalable, governed platform.
• Enable downstream analytics and AI/ML use cases as the platform matures.
• Lead and grow a small data engineering team over time.

Skills

Azure data engineering

SQL fundamentals

Pipelines / ETL-ELT

Leadership / mentoring

Stakeholder communication

Tools

Azure Data Factory

Azure Synapse

Microsoft Fabric

Power BI

Python

Job description

Salary: £100,000 - 100,000 per year

Requirements:

• Proven hands-on experience building modern cloud data platforms end to end, from ingestion through to analytics and AI consumption, not just overseeing others doing it
• Strong Azure data engineering background, including Data Factory, Synapse and/or Fabric, with solid SQL and pipeline/ETL-ELT fundamentals
• Direct experience implementing medallion or equivalent layered lakehouse architecture
• Comfortable being the most senior technical person in the room while still writing pipelines and making architectural decisions personally
• Some experience leading, mentoring or growing a data engineering team
• Strong stakeholder communication, with confidence communicating with both technical and non-technical audiences
• Production experience specifically in Microsoft Fabric is desirable
• Power BI experience, particularly Direct Lake mode, is desirable
• Python/PySpark experience is desirable
• Data governance or security experience is desirable
• Experience enabling AI/ML workloads from a data platform, not just BI, is desirable

Responsibilities:

• Design and build a modern data platform in Azure Fabric, from ingestion through to a governed lakehouse/warehouse and on to analytics and AI enablement
• Implement medallion architecture (bronze/silver/gold) as the core data model
• Set technical direction as the senior technical owner of the data function
• Work closely with the CIO and business stakeholders to translate requirements into a scalable, governed platform
• Enable downstream analytics and AI/ML use cases as the platform matures
• Lead and grow a small data engineering team over time

Technologies:

• AI
• Azure
• Cloud
• ETL
• Fabric
• Power BI
• Python
• PySpark
• SQL
• Security

More:

We are investing in a modern data platform on Microsoft Azure Fabric and need a hands-on leader who wants to stay close to the tooling, designing, building, and writing pipelines personally rather than only directing others. The role reports directly to the CIO and includes an existing data engineer as the first direct report, with scope to grow the team as the platform matures. This is a hybrid role based in Leicester, with 3 days per week onsite, and offers a salary of up to £100,000 plus bonus.

last updated 40 week of 2026