Lead Data Engineer (Databricks)

United Utilities; Warrington; Hybrid; GBP 75,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus 10.5%

Pension 21%

Wellbeing benefits

Job summary

United Utilities is seeking a Lead Data Engineer in Warrington to own and evolve our Databricks-based data platform for near real‑time river water quality insights.

You will design and optimise scalable batch and streaming pipelines, enforce strong data governance and collaborate with data scientists, analysts and environmental specialists to deliver trusted datasets with reliability and cost efficiency.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering or a related discipline.
• 5+ years’ experience in data engineering roles, including 3+ years with Databricks.

Responsibilities

• Design, build and optimise Databricks-based data pipelines for scalable batch and streaming processing.
• Ensure near real-time monitoring SLAs and data governance across pipelines.
• Collaborate with data scientists and analysts to deliver well-documented datasets.
• Mentor engineers and promote best practices in CI/CD, testing and version control.
• Monitor, troubleshoot and continuously improve production pipelines for reliability and cost efficiency.

Skills

Databricks

Spark

PySpark

Delta Lake

Unity Catalog

Workflows

ETL/ELT pipelines

Python

SQL

Cloud platforms

Data modelling

Data governance

Airflow

CI/CD

Git workflows

Automated testing

IoT data

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science

Data Engineering related field

Tools

Databricks

Job description

Job number UU05908 Country United Kingdom Region Cheshire West and Chester Location name Lingley Mere (UU), Lingley Green Avenue, Great Sankey, Warrington, WA5 3LP Posting End Date 08/09/2026 Band 4a Role Type Permanent Work hours 37 Hours per Week Salary Competitive Salary

About us

River Water Quality Programme
Warrington (Hybrid – 3 days onsite per week)

At United Utilities, we’re committed to protecting the environment that millions of people depend on every day. As part of our Digital Services team, you’ll play a pivotal role in one of our most important and high-impact initiatives: near real time monitoring of river water quality.

We’re looking for a Lead Data Engineer to take technical ownership of modern, scalable data platforms that turn complex environmental and telemetry data into trusted insights for regulators, scientists, and operational teams.

What you’ll be doing

As the Lead Data Engineer on our River Water Quality Programme, you’ll design, build, and optimise Databricks-based data pipelines that enable timely, reliable and well-governed data across the organisation.

You’ll:

• Design and develop scalable batch and streaming data pipelines using Databricks, Spark and Delta Lake
• Optimise Spark jobs and workflows to meet near real-time monitoring SLAs
• Build and maintain streaming pipelines using Structured Streaming and Delta Live Tables
• Ensure strong data governance, including schema enforcement, validation rules and ACID compliance
• Orchestrate and automate pipelines using Databricks Jobs, APIs or cloud-native schedulers
• Collaborate with data scientists, analysts and environmental specialists to deliver high-quality, well-documented datasets
• Monitor, troubleshoot and continuously improve production pipelines for reliability, performance and cost efficiency
• Champion best practices across CI/CD, testing, version control and documentation

Act as a technical leader and mentor, raising standards across the data engineering community

What you’ll bring

• Deep expertise in Databricks (Spark / PySpark, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Workflows)
• Strong experience building ETL/ELT pipelines, both batch and streaming
• Advanced Python and SQL skills
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (Azure, AWS or GCP)
• Solid understanding of data modelling and modern architectures
• Strong knowledge of data governance, security and compliance
• Experience with orchestration tools such as Airflow
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, Git workflows and automated testing
• Exposure to real-time, IoT or environmental telemetry data

Experience & Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering or a related discipline
• 5+ years’ experience in data engineering roles, including 3+ years with Databricks

Proven ability to lead technically and mentor engineers

What you’ll get

We believe in rewarding our people properly:

• Up to 10.5% annual bonus
• Outstanding pension – up to 21% combined contribution
• Wellbeing benefits and support programmes

Other

Why United Utilities?

You’ll be working on data that truly matters — protecting rivers, supporting environmental compliance, and helping shape the future of sustainable water management across the North West.

If you’re passionate about modern data engineering, enjoy technical leadership, and want your work to have real-world environmental impact, we’d love to hear from you.