Lead Data Engineer

SAGA PLC; Sandgate; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

25 days holiday

Pension 10%

Annual bonus Up to 5%

Life assurance 4x salary

Wellbeing programme

Staff discounts

Job summary

Saga PLC is seeking a Lead Data Engineer to shape a unified data platform for the Saga Travel estates. You will lead the data engineering team, own Snowflake pipelines from ingestion to serving, and drive governance, security and performance across two legacy platforms.

You will design, build and test dbt models, implement CI/CD, manage data quality and masking, and collaborate with SMEs and third‑party suppliers to deliver reliable, scalable data capabilities for Holidays and Cruise businesses.

Qualifications

• Proven leadership experience in a modern cloud data platform.
• Direct Snowflake exposure to hit the ground running.
• Experience with dbt modelling or demonstrated capability to learn quickly.
• Advanced SQL skills including complex transformations and performance tuning.
• Strong dimensional modelling knowledge: facts, dimensions, conformed dimensions and SCDs.
• Proven both people leadership and ability to mentor engineers.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Saga Travel data engineering team and drive professional development.
• Design, build and test dbt models across Snowflake’s intermediate and mart layers.
• Own the Travel DW stack end-to-end: structure, standards, tests, documentation, reviews and promotions.
• Build and own CI/CD pipelines to ensure automated testing before production.
• Own orchestration of the Travel transformation layer and integration with ingestion framework.
• Establish monitoring, alerting and incident response for nightly builds and data quality checks.

Skills

Leadership

Snowflake exposure

Dbt modelling

Advanced SQL

Dimensional modelling

Stakeholder management

Third‑party coordination

Data governance

Education

Bachelor's degree in data/IT field

Tools

Snowflake

dbt

SQL

Job description

Responsibilities

• Leading the Saga Travel data engineering team, supporting professional development
• Designing, building and testing dbt models across the intermediate and mart layers of the Travel Snowflake platform, re-implementing documented business logic reverse-engineered from the two legacy estates
• Owning the Travel DW stack end-to-end: repository structure, model and naming standards, materialisation policy, test discipline, documentation, code review and promotion between development, test and production environments
• Working on with project team to build and then take ownership of the CI/CD pipeline so that every change is built and tested automatically before it reaches production
• Owning orchestration of the Travel transformation layer and the operational interface with the Saga Group ingestion framework, including the agreed handover contract and the handling of late or failed loads
• Establishing monitoring, alerting and incident response for the nightly build so that failures are detected, triaged and fixed
• Making data quality testing a routine part of the build, including source freshness checks, schema and referential tests, and reconciliation against legacy outputs during parallel running
• Implementing data masking on Saga Travel objects in Snowflake, mirroring the Group data protection taxonomy, and own those policies on Travel-owned objects
• Monitoring and managing Snowflake consumption, tagging workloads so that platform cost is reported and controlled
• Working with business SMEs and data analysts to translate agreed business definitions into implemented tested models
• Building the conformed Travel dimensions and the unified trading view that bring the two Travel estates together
• Supporting decommissioning of the legacy Holidays and Cruise platforms once migrated, including cutover planning, verification and rollback contingency
• Maintaining clear technical documentation and runbooks so that the platform is supportable by more than one person

You'll have proven experience in data engineering with demonstrable hands‑on experience designing, building and operating production data pipelines in Snowflake.

Skills and Experience Required

• Solid leadership experience working with a modern cloud data platform (must have some direct Snowflake exposure to be able to hit the ground running)
• Dbt modelling experience, or the demonstrable capability and willingness to own that learning quickly, alongside a commitment to continuous professional development
• Advanced SQL, including complex transformation logic, data modelling and query performance optimisation
• Strong dimensional modelling knowledge: facts, dimensions, conformed dimensions and slowly changing dimensions
• Hands‑on engineering credibility, with the judgement to know when to build, when to simplify, and when to stop
• Proven people leadership: setting direction, giving feedback, and developing engineers
• Strong stakeholder and relationship management skills across technical and non-technical audiences
• Able to explain technical trade‑offs, and their cost and risk implications, to senior stakeholders
• Confident holding a technical position with third‑party suppliers and Group colleagues, constructively

As Lead Data Engineer, you'll play a pivotal role in shaping how Saga Travel uses data to make better decisions, understand our customers and deliver exceptional experiences across our Holidays and Cruise businesses.

You’ll join our Data & Analytics team at an exciting point in our data journey, helping to build a new, integrated data platform that brings together two legacy estates on a single, governed Snowflake platform. This is a genuine opportunity to build something from the ground up from ingestion to transformation and then serving. You'll be developing the engineering capability, setting the standards and ultimately taking ownership of the platform as it evolves. Working closely with our implementation partner and Saga Group's data engineering and architecture teams, you'll combine hands‑on engineering with technical leadership and the development of our engineering capability. You'll also lead and support a Data Engineer, helping them grow while creating a pragmatic, high‑performing engineering culture. And this is just the beginning. As the platform matures, you'll help us unlock the next generation of data capability, including AI‑enabled tools and natural language access to trusted, governed data for our business users.

This role requires you to be working from our Folkestone office a minimum of 3 times a week. We have designated office space for colleagues in our Travel business, allowing us to collaborate and share success as a function.

Package Description

At Saga we recognise that our people make us special. We believe our colleagues deserve rewards for the excellence they demonstrate every single day, that's why we have put together an amazing benefits package for all colleagues. Saga Values: Make it Happen, Do the Right Thing, Customer First, Excellence Every Day, Our People Make Us Special. About The Company Over the past 75 years we have become the UK's specialist provider of products and services to people aged over 50 in the UK. We're the most trusted brand amongst UK consumers in this demographic, recognised for high‑quality products and exceptional standards of service.

Our product portfolio includes cruises, holidays, insurance, personal finance products and our Saga Magazine. Our focus on delivering exceptional products and service empowers our colleagues to create moments that are personal and special for our customers and for each other and our values underpin our approach and help guide us to deliver our purpose. We're committed to making sure that colleagues can be their best, be themselves and make a difference – more than anywhere else. We have done this by creating a truly inclusive culture, where all colleagues can bring their full and authentic selves to work and be treated with dignity and respect in an environment that is free from discrimination and harassment. Thanks to our people, Saga was awarded with a Gold for Best Customer Centric Culture in 2025. This is testament to the great culture we've built together. This award belongs to all our colleagues who collectively make Saga a fantastic place to work.

Benefits

• 25 days holiday + bank holidays
• Option to purchase additional leave - 5 extra days
• Pension scheme matched up to 10%
• Company performance related annual bonus - Up to 5%
• Life assurance policy on joining us, 4 x salary
• Wellbeing programme
• Colleague discounts including family discounts on cruises, holidays and insurance
• Range of reductions and offers from leading retailers, travel groups and entertainment companies
• Enhanced maternity and paternity leave
• Grandparents leave
• Income protection
• Access to Saga Academy, our bespoke learning platform