Lead Engineer - Data Platform

RJC Group; Greater London; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

RJC Group in London is seeking a hands-on Tech Lead to build a real-time commodity intelligence platform from the ground up. This generalist data/platform engineering role will design the architecture and write production code behind it.

You will work across streaming, graph, time-series and large-scale data, owning the technical direction of a new platform and delivering scalable, high-performance systems.

Qualifications

• Hands-on data/platform engineering experience at Tech Lead level.
• Deep Kafka and real-time streaming experience.
• Experience with Iceberg or lakehouse technologies.
• Proven ability to design distributed systems.
• Experience with time-series data and high-performance analytics.
• Exposure to knowledge graphs, semantics or ontologies.
• Interest in AI/agent reasoning applied to data.
• Comfort switching between architecture and production code.

Responsibilities

• Designing and building Real Time streaming pipelines on Kafka.
• Architecting a lakehouse platform using Apache Iceberg.
• Building high-performance analytics over large-scale and temporal data.
• Developing knowledge graphs, semantic models and ontologies.
• Bringing AI and agent-based reasoning into the platform.
• Designing distributed systems that scale, and writing production-grade code.
• Setting technical direction and standards as the platform grows.

Skills

Data/Platform lead

Kafka streaming

Iceberg lakehouse

Distributed systems

Time-series analytics

Knowledge graphs

AI reasoning

Full-stack architecture

Tools

Kafka

Apache Iceberg

Job description

We're looking for a strong, hands-on Tech Lead to help build a Real Time commodity intelligence platform from the ground up. This is a generalist data/platform engineering role. You'll design the architecture and write the production code behind it.

The work cuts across streaming, graph, time-series and large-scale data. If you like hard problems and want to own the technical direction of something new, this is it.

What you'll be doing

• Designing and building Real Time streaming pipelines on Kafka
• Architecting a lakehouse platform using Apache Iceberg
• Building high-performance analytics over large-scale and temporal (time-series) data
• Developing knowledge graphs, semantic models and ontologies to give the data structure and meaning
• Bringing AI and agent-based reasoning into the platform
• Designing distributed systems that scale, and writing production-grade code to deliver them
• Setting technical direction and standards as the platform grows

What you'll bring

• Strong hands-on experience as a data or platform engineer, at Tech Lead level or close to it
• Deep Kafka and Real Time streaming experience
• Experience with Iceberg or other lakehouse technologies
• A track record of designing and building distributed systems
• Experience with time-series/temporal data and high-performance analytics
• Exposure to knowledge graphs, semantics or ontologies
• Interest in AI/agent reasoning and how to apply it to real data problems
• Comfortable switching between architecture and code, and keen to work across the whole stack

Nice to have

• Commodities, energy or trading background
• Experience building a platform from scratch