Lead Data engineer (Lead II - Data Engineering)

UST; Leeds; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

UST is seeking a Lead Data Engineer in West Yorkshire with hybrid work, to drive data engineering across multiple squads and provide technical leadership and mentorship. You will collaborate with Product Managers, Data Analysts and Architects to deliver reliable, high-quality data products that support client objectives.

As the senior engineer, you will champion best practices, participate in agile communities, and balance hands‑on development with leadership responsibilities to ensure

Qualifications

• Proven experience building and maintaining high‑quality, secure data solutions.
• Strong ability to operate scalable, high‑performance applications in production.
• Excellent communication and mentorship of data engineers.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical mentorship and direction to data engineers, elevating team capability and standards.
• Foster a DevOps culture of ownership across the engineering organisation.
• Lead best practices in data engineering, code reviews, and development activities.

Skills

Data engineering

Mentoring

Communication

Leadership

Agile

Tools

Azure Databricks

Azure Data Factory

Python

GitHub

Job description

Role Description

Location:West Yorkshire- multiple locations(Hybrid- 3 days working from onsite-Mandatory)

Immediate start

Permanent/ Contract inside IR35/ Fixed term contract

We're looking for a Lead Data Engineer to join UST Data Team. As the most senior engineer working across a number of squads, you'll blend hands-on engineering with providing technical leadership and mentorship to data engineers.

You will work closely with Product Managers, Visualisation Engineers, Data Analysts, Data Architects, and other stakeholders to deliver reliable, high-quality data products that drive client's strategic objectives. Additionally, you'll play a central role in championing best practices and fostering continuous improvement, actively contributing within our Agile community of practice.

Your Role (Key Responsibilities)

• Provide technical mentorship and direction to data engineers, helping to elevate team capability and maintain engineering standards, but also maximise their potential and promote career growth.
• Foster a DevOps culture of "you build it, you run it, you own it", promoting autonomy and ownership across the engineering organisation.
• Lead best practices in data engineering, code reviews, and development activities, ensuring the highest quality standards.
• Contributing to the Lead Engineer & Agile communities of practice. Ensuring data quality and integrity.
• Work with structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data with varying latencies, from batch through to real-time.
• Ensure engineering solutions comply with architectural frameworks and best practices defined by Data Architects.
• Collaborate with Product Managers and Data Analysts to ensure business requirements are translated into scalable, performant data solutions.
• Evaluate and recommend new technologies and tools to enhance data engineering capabilities.
• Balance hands-on engineering responsibilities with technical leadership to drive high-quality delivery.

About You (Experience & Qualifications)

• Proven experience building and maintaining high-quality, secure data solutions.
• Skilled in operating scalable and high-performance applications in production environments.
• Prepare to be tenacious and collaborate to drive the right solutions forward.
• Have a good understanding of Microsoft Azure tooling including Azure Databricks, preferably with hands-on experience.
• Strong understanding of data modelling and architectures (e.g. data vaults, data warehousing, data lakes etc.)
• Experience with Azure based solutions such as Azure Data Factory.
• Extensive experience with languages such as Python, SQL and, preferably, PySpark.
• Version control and best practices using Github.
• Experience in working with Agile frameworks such as Scrum, Kanban, Lean.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to clearly explain technical concepts to non-technical business stakeholders.
• Demonstrated experience leading and mentoring data engineers.

#UST

Skills

SQL, Python, Microsoft Azure, Azure Data Factory, Databricks