Lead Data Engineer

Live Nation Entertainment, Inc.; London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading company is seeking a highly skilled Lead Data Engineer for their London office, responsible for designing and optimizing cloud-based data infrastructure. This role involves collaboration with multiple teams, mentoring engineers, and ensuring data governance while using advanced technologies like Databricks. Ideal candidates will have strong programming skills and experience in real-time data processing.

Qualifications

• Proven expertise with Databricks, including Unity Catalog.
• Experience leading and mentoring data engineering teams.
• Strong analytical skills with a focus on data quality and performance.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and optimization of the data platform using Databricks.
• Build and maintain ETL/ELT data pipelines.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure data needs are met.

Skills

Databricks

Scala

Python

Spark

SQL

ETL/ELT

Data governance

Git

Job description

Job Summary:

LEAD DATA ENGINEER

Location: London, United Kingdom (1day a week in the office)

Division: Live Nation International

Line Manager: Director of Engineering

Contract Terms: Permanent

ABOUT LIVE NATION

The Live Nation Digital Tech Team (LNDT) drives the fan experience across 36 international Live Nation sites, covering 59 countries and 33 languages. We are truly responsible for the online face of the business and are the team who help fans discover and buy the tickets they just cannot miss out on. As well as our core business with the Live Nation sites, we support and manage over 200 festival and venue sites who work independently but within our framework and we are required to meet their needs whilst allowing them autonomy.

THE JOB

We are looking for a highly skilled Lead Data Engineer to design, develop, and maintain our cloud-based data infrastructure, with a strong focus on Databricks. In this key leadership role, you will drive the architecture, implementation, and optimisation of our data platform, enabling robust data pipelines and analytics capabilities that power business-critical insights and real-time operations.

You will collaborate cross-functionally with engineering, product, and analytics teams to ensure data availability, quality, and performance, while also mentoring a team of data engineers and contributing to the long-term technical vision.

Please note: As our platform operates 24/7, occasional out-of-hours work and on-call support may be required as part of a rota.

WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING

• Lead the architectural design, implementation, and ongoing optimization of our international data platform, aligned with enterprise-wide standards.

• Build and maintain scalable ETL/ELT data pipelines using Databricks, Spark, and related technologies.

• Optimize Databricks clusters, workflows, and jobs to ensure cost efficiency and high performance.

• Design and manage data lakes, data warehouses, and associated infrastructure to ensure data accuracy, integrity, and availability.

• Write high-quality, efficient code in Scala, Python, and Spark, following best practices for maintainability and scalability.

• Develop and implement robust monitoring, alerting, and error-handling mechanisms to ensure pipeline reliability.

• Partner with business stakeholders, product managers, analysts, and engineers to understand data needs and deliver effective solutions.

• Lead technical discussions, guide architectural decisions, and clearly communicate complex data concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Mentor and support the professional growth of data engineers within the team.

• Enforce strong standards for data governance, security, privacy, and compliance.

• Maintain comprehensive documentation of data systems, pipelines, and processes.

• Provide on-call support as part of a shared team rota to ensure platform availability.

ABOUT YOU

• Proven expertise working with Databricks, including Unity Catalog.

• Strong programming skills in Scala, Python, Spark & SQL/MYSQL.

• Solid experience with version control systems, particularly Git.

• Strong background in designing and optimizing complex data pipelines and infrastructure.

• Experience leading and mentoring technical teams of data engineers.

• Deep understanding of data warehousing, ETL/ELT patterns, and real-time data processing.

• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills, with meticulous attention to detail.

• Ability to work proactively, identify challenges, and implement improvements.

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain complex data concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Collaborative mindset, capable of working cross-functionally in a fast-paced, evolving environment.

• Eagerness to learn and adapt to emerging technologies.

A job description is a written statement of the essential characteristics job, with its principal responsibilities, incorporating a note of the skills, knowledge and experience required for a satisfactory level of performance. This is not intended to be a complete, detailed account of all aspects the duties and skills involved.