Lead Data Engineer - Founding Member (Contract) [HR208] (UK)

Lever, Inc.; Greater London; Remote; GBP 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Smart Working in the United Kingdom seeks a Lead Data Engineer to design and scale the data infrastructure powering its AI assistant platform. You will own real-time data pipelines, vector databases, and ML data workflows, collaborating with AI and backend engineers to meet high-volume demands.

You will define data architecture and standards, build reliable data processing, and lead the formation of a data team as the company grows.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional experience in data engineering roles.
• Strong experience designing and building data pipelines and distributed data systems.
• Experience with relational databases (PostgreSQL preferred; MySQL acceptable).
• NoSQL databases experience.
• Strong Python programming experience.
• Ability to justify architectural decisions, not just implement them.
• Experience building scalable backend systems.
• Experience designing data models and storage architectures.
• Strong understanding of data processing performance and optimisation.
• Experience with Spark, Airflow, Kafka, and OpenSearch/Elasticsearch is highly desirable.
• Experience with PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and vector databases like Qdrant or Milvus is desirable.
• Experience with Pandas or Polars is desirable.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build scalable data pipelines and infrastructure for AI products.
• Design and maintain data ingestion, transformation and storage architectures for operational and AI workloads.
• Develop and manage batch and real-time data pipelines.
• Build and optimise vector search, retrieval and ML data pipelines.
• Ensure data reliability, security and governance across the platform.
• Collaborate with AI and backend teams to support training, inference and product features.
• Implement monitoring and data quality frameworks.
• Contribute to long-term data strategy and architecture decisions.

Skills

Data infrastructure

Python

Distributed systems

Data architecture

Backend systems

Data modeling

Performance optimisation

Tools

PostgreSQL

MySQL

NoSQL databases

Apache Spark

Airflow

Kafka

Elasticsearch/OpenSearch

Vector databases

Pandas/Polars

Job description

About Smart Working

At Smart Working, we believe your job should not only look right on paper but also feel right every day. This isn’t just another remote opportunity - it’s about finding where you truly belong, no matter where you are. From day one, you’re welcomed into a genuine community that values your growth and well-being. Our mission is simple: to break down geographic barriers and connect skilled professionals with outstanding global teams and products for full-time, long-term roles. We help you discover meaningful work with teams that invest in your success, where you’re empowered to grow personally and professionally.

Join one of the highest-rated workplaces on Glassdoor and experience what it means to thrive in a truly remote-first world.

About the Role

We are looking for a Lead Data Engineer to build and lead the data infrastructure powering an intelligent AI assistant platform. This role will architect and scale the systems that power our AI products, from real-time data pipelines and analytics infrastructure to vector databases and machine learning data workflows.

You will work closely with AI engineers, backend engineers, and product teams to ensure our platform can process large volumes of operational data reliably and intelligently. You will define our data architecture, tooling, and engineering standards, and play a key role in building the foundations of the future data team.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build scalable data pipelines and infrastructure to support AI and product systems.
• Design and maintain data ingestion, transformation and storage architectures for operational and AI workloads.
• Develop and manage batch and real-time data pipelines.
• Build and optimise systems for vector search, retrieval and machine learning data pipelines.
• Ensure data reliability, security and governance across the platform.
• Collaborate with AI and backend engineering teams to support training, inference and product features.
• Implement monitoring, observability and data quality frameworks.
• Optimise the performance of large-scale datasets and query systems.
• Contribute to technical architecture decisions and long-term data strategy.
• Act as the founding data hire, defining culture, standards and the hiring bar for the data function as it scales.
• Partner directly with founders and product leadership to translate data capabilities into product decisions.

Requirements

• 7+ years of professional experience, with the majority of that experience in dedicated data engineering roles.
• Strong experience designing and building data pipelines and distributed data systems.
• Experience working with relational databases, with PostgreSQL preferred, although MySQL or similar is acceptable.
• Experience working with NoSQL databases.
• Strong programming experience in Python.
• Demonstrated ability to make and justify architectural decisions, rather than only implementing them.
• Experience building scalable backend systems.
• Experience designing data models and storage architectures.
• Strong understanding of data processing performance and optimisation.
• Experience with some of the following data frameworks and infrastructure technologies is highly desirable: Apache Spark, Apache Airflow, Kafka, and Elasticsearch or OpenSearch.
• Experience with relevant database technologies is highly desirable, including PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and vector databases such as Qdrant, Milvus or pgvector.
• Experience with Python data-processing libraries such as Pandas or Polars is highly desirable.

Nice to Have

• Experience working on AI or machine learning platforms.
• Familiarity with stream processing and event-driven architectures.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure such as GCP, AWS or Azure.
• Experience working in high-growth startups or early-stage companies.
• Experience with vector databases used in modern AI systems.