Lead Data Engineer — AI-Driven Data Platform

Inara; Greater Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 85,000; Full time

Job summary

Inara is seeking a hands-on Lead Data Engineer in Greater Manchester. You will own the data platform, oversee a small technical team, and integrate modern batch and live data processing to serve BI, Data Science and AI use cases. You will push technology boundaries by using Claude Code and cloud-based data tooling.

The role demands excellence in data governance, robust SQL/Python, and strong stakeholder communication to align with business goals. This is a hybrid role with on-site days.

Qualifications

• Experience delivering batch processing, ELT, and streaming pipelines.
• Hands-on data engineering for BI, data science and AI use cases.
• Strong SQL and Python with testing and engineering discipline.
• Proven leadership of a small technical team including hiring.
• Experience with data governance, retention, lineage and PCI-DSS controls.
• Comfort using Claude Code or similar tools to accelerate development.

Responsibilities

• Improve and evolve the data estate for modern batch and live data processing.
• Automate manual, duplicated, or fragile data processes.
• Support BI, Data Science, and AI teams from a single platform.
• Build a semantic layer and expose via MCP interfaces for analytics tools.
• Deliver governed self-serve data access for safe querying across the business.
• Lead the design of a Customer Data Platform for batch and streaming data.
• Line-manage the data engineers, including hiring and development.
• Own governance, security and running costs of the data platform.

Skills

Batch processing

Streaming data

SQL & Python

Leadership

Data governance

Tools

Claude Code

Terraform

AWS basics

Kinesis

Power BI

Iceberg

Job description

Inara is seeking a hands-on Lead Data Engineer in Greater Manchester. You will own the data platform, oversee a small technical team, and integrate modern batch and live data processing to serve BI, Data Science and AI use cases. You will push technology boundaries by using Claude Code and cloud-based data tooling.

The role demands excellence in data governance, robust SQL/Python, and strong stakeholder communication to align with business goals. This is a hybrid role with on-site days.