Principal Data Engineer

Royal London; Alderley Edge; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

28 days annual leave plus bank holidays

Up to 14% employer pension contribution

Private medical insurance

Flexible and hybrid working

Job summary

Royal London is seeking a Principal Data Engineer to join the Core Data Engineering Team in Alderley Park, UK. In this hybrid role, you will provide technical leadership across engineering, testing, and data modeling, shaping how data and AI create impactful customer outcomes. Collaborating with stakeholders, you'll build high-quality, scalable data products while promoting best practices in engineering standards. The position comes with numerous benefits, including 28 days of annual leave and substantial pension contributions.

Qualifications

• Hands-on expertise in data engineering and building high-accuracy data products.
• Experience delivering cross-functional work with stakeholders.
• Experience evaluating and adopting AI-enabled tools.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership across engineering, testing, and data modeling.
• Communicate complex data challenges clearly to senior stakeholders.
• Set the technical direction for the conformed layer of our Enterprise Data Platform.

Skills

Data engineering

Python

SQL

Databricks

Azure Data Factory

CI/CD pipelines

ETL/ELT processes

AI-enabled tools

Tools

Azure Data Lake (ADLS Gen2)

Power BI

Job description

Location: Alderley Park, Wilmslow (Edinburgh and Glasgow also considered)

Working Style: Hybrid-50% from home / 50% office based

About Royal London

We’re the UK’s largest mutual life, pensions and investment company, offering protection, long-term savings and asset management products and services.

Our People Promise to our colleagues is that we will all work somewhere inclusive, responsible, enjoyable and fulfilling. This is underpinned by our Spirit of Royal London values; Empowered, Trustworthy, Collaborate, Achieve.

We have a fantastic opportunity to join Royal London as a Principal Data Engineer and play a key role in shaping how Data and AI create meaningful outcomes for our customers. You’ll provide technical leadership across engineering, testing and data modelling within the Core Data Engineering Team, guiding how we design, build and evolve scalable, resilient data products.

You’ll break down complex data challenges and communicate them clearly to senior stakeholders, turning them into actionable roadmaps and epics. You’ll review route‑to‑live approaches, environment strategies and testing frameworks, ensuring strong controls, monitoring and data integrity across our data.

In this key role, you’ll help define designs, patterns and standards, working closely with Architects and contribute across your areas of specialism.

You’ll also set the technical direction for the conformed layer of our Enterprise Data Platform—a crucial asset that enables standardised, reusable, high-quality data consumption across Royal London.

You’ll collaborate closely with senior stakeholders, architects, and delivery teams, championing best practice while supporting a culture of learning, inclusion and continuous improvement. You will also help recruit and shape high performing teams and deliver value through providing data as a service across Royal London.

Benefits

• 28 days annual leave plus bank holidays
• Up to 14% employer pension contribution
• Private medical insurance
• Flexible and hybrid working to support work–life balance

What You Will Bring to the Role

• You have hands‑on expertise in data engineering and/or building high‑accuracy data products, and you enjoy collaborating with others to set good engineering standards.
• You have experience delivering cross‑functional work, partnering with stakeholders and shaping action plans and roadmaps.
• You have experience evaluating and adopting AI‑enabled tools to improve data engineering practices.
• You have experience building CI/CD pipelines for data engineering.
• You have experience designing modern ETL/ELT and data transformation processes.
• You have experience with Databricks, Azure Data Factory and/or similar cloud data engineering tools.
• You’re comfortable coding in Python (including PySpark) and SQL.
• You have knowledge of Azure Data Lake (ADLS Gen2) and big data services.
• You have a working understanding of AI/ML, MDM, data modelling and data analysis.
• You have working knowledge of data lakehouse concepts and common data warehousing patterns (e.g., fact‑dimension, 3NF, star schema, Data Vault).
• You’re familiar with BI tools (e.g., Power BI) and how to optimise data products for consumption.

Inclusion, Diversity and Belonging

We’re an Inclusive employer. We celebrate and value different backgrounds and cultures across Royal London. Our diverse people and perspectives give us a range of skills which are recognised and respected – whatever their background.