Lead Data Engineer

Publicis Groupe Holdings B.V; City Of London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading global marketing agency in London is seeking a Data Engineering Technical Lead. This role involves designing and optimizing cloud-based data platforms while leading the engineering team. Ideal candidates have extensive experience in data engineering and mastery of cloud technologies like GCP and Snowflake. This is an opportunity to shape the future of data infrastructure in a diverse and inclusive environment.

Benefits

Diversity and inclusion initiatives

Flexible working arrangements

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in data engineering, ideally in a technical leadership or lead role.
• Proven track record designing and delivering enterprise-grade data platforms.
• Deep expertise in data modeling and modern data lake architectures.

Responsibilities

• Lead the data engineering team and drive best practices.
• Design and architect scalable data pipelines integrating multiple data sources.
• Define and enforce data quality and governance standards.

Skills

Data engineering leadership

Python

SQL

GCP expertise

Data modeling

Git

Tools

Snowflake

Databricks

BigQuery

S3

Job description

Company description

Publicis Production harnesses the power of Publicis Groupe's entire global production capabilities. Through our family of production brands, we access best-in-class production talent, models and technology worldwide. Our purpose is to deliver seamless, relevant and impactful consumer experiences across every touchpoint in every market. We do this with pioneering production solutions that drive performance in a data-led marketing landscape and help brands to win in the platform world.

Overview

We are seeking an experienced and highly skilled Data Engineering Technical Lead to drive the design, development, and optimization of our cloud-based data platforms and solutions. This role will be a blend of hands on technical development, leading the engineering team and also input into design and strategy decisions. Initially there will be a focus on GCP but will also involve working extensively with Snowflake and Databricks, as well as other modern cloud and data engineering tools.

As the technical leader for the data engineering function, you will define architectural standards, mentor engineers, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure scalable, reliable, and high-performance data solutions. You will be responsible for guiding the evolution of our data infrastructure, enabling advanced analytics, and ensuring data quality and accessibility across the organization.

The ideal candidate will have had essential hands-on experience building pipelines in Python, analysing data requirements with SQL, and modern data engineering practices and deep technical expertise in GCP, AWS and/or Databricks alongside experience of driving the team and inputting to the overall vision/strategy.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to the data engineering team, driving best practices in architecture, development, and deployment
• Design and architect highly scalable, reliable, and secure data pipelines (batch and streaming) integrating internal and external data sources (APIs, streaming platforms, message queues, etc.)
• Collaborate with product, analytics, and engineering stakeholders to understand data requirements and design optimal solutions
• Define and enforce data quality, governance, and monitoring standards across the data platform
• Optimize the performance and scalability of ETL/ELT workflows and cloud-based data systems
• Own the roadmap for data infrastructure modernization, recommending new tools, technologies, and practices to improve efficiency and reliability
• Act as the primary escalation point for complex technical challenges, troubleshooting issues and ensuring system resilience

Qualifications

Experience

• Extensive experience in data engineering, ideally in a technical leadership or lead role
• Proven track record designing and delivering enterprise-grade data platforms on GCP, AWS, or Azure
• Deep expertise in data modeling, data warehousing, distributed systems, and modern data lake architectures
• Advanced proficiency in Python (including PySpark) and SQL, with experience building scalable data pipelines and analytics workflows
• Strong background in cloud-native data infrastructure (e.g., BigQuery, Redshift, Snowflake, Databricks)
• Demonstrated ability to lead teams, set technical direction, and collaborate effectively across business and technology functions

Desirable skills

• Familiarity with machine learning pipelines and MLOps practices
• Additional experience with Databricks and specific AWS such as Glue, S3, Lambda
• Proficient in Git, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps tools (e.g., Azure DevOps)
• Hands-on experience with web scraping, REST API integrations, and streaming data pipelines
• Knowledge of JavaScript and front-end frameworks (e.g., React)

Additional information

Diversity and inclusion is a core part of who we are at Prodigious London. We're committed to building an inclusive culture that encourages, celebrates and supports our wonderfully diverse employee group - whatever their age, gender identity, race, sexual orientation, physical or mental ability or ethnicity. Diversity and inclusion doesn't just fuel our creativity and innovation, it brings us closer to our people and audiences. We will continue to strive to create a culture and environment where everyone feels empowered and more importantly comfortable enough to bring their full, authentic selves to work. We are committed to providing reasonable adjustments for employees with disabilities and for candidates in our application process. If you need assistance or adjustment due to a disability, please contact us.