Principal Data Engineer

albelli; London; On-site; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Positive work environment

Opportunity for personal impact

Job summary

A personalized photo products company in London seeks an experienced Principal Data Engineer to rebuild their data platform. You will lead technical initiatives and mentor a team of engineers, ensuring high-quality data processing and governance. The ideal candidate has extensive experience in data engineering and a relevant STEM degree. This role emphasizes collaboration and communication within cross-functional teams. Competitive compensation and a positive work environment are offered.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in designing, building, and maintaining data platforms.
• Proven ability to lead technical design and architecture discussions.
• Experience mentoring and coaching junior engineers.
• Deep understanding of data engineering principles.
• Proficiency in SQL and programming languages relevant to data engineering.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate within a cross-functional team to define strategies and goals.
• Define and champion technical principles to enhance data platform quality.
• Lead technical solution design for complex initiatives.
• Drive continuous improvement on metrics like business value and delivery quality.
• Coach engineers on software development best practices.

Skills

Data engineering

Technical leadership

Collaboration skills

Communication skills

Education

Degree in STEM field

Tools

Snowflake

AWS Data Solutions

Git

Python

Job description

About Our Data & ML Team

Data & AI powers our growth and innovation. We build enterprise platforms to create actionable insight enabling colleagues to make effective decisions and create proactive, automated, hyper-personalised experiences for our customers.

We have a growing data and AI team in the UK and Netherlands. We function as the backbone for a variety of data-hungry consumers and platforms across the business within Marketing, Finance, Operations and Product teams. Our AI photo services are at the heart of our consumer experience and we’re expanding our footprint towards decentralised ML adoption within the business.

As a team, we have come together through mergers. We are at the end of a phase of simplification of legacy infrastructure and moving into the next phase of consolidation and growth.

Who We’re Looking For

We are looking for an experienced Principal Data Engineer to join our London-based data team and help us (re-)build a platform that accelerates a decentralised-by-design data adoption model within the business. We care about providing trustable, usable data that meets business needs. We want you to own and drive technical excellence within your team to make this organisation-level change happen.

You’re a software engineering technical leader at heart. You thrive in the data engineering and analytics engineering domain. You care deeply about customer outcome-focused data engineering excellence.

Areas of Expertise

Technical Leadership

• Extensive experience in data engineering, including designing, building, and maintaining robust and scalable data platforms that enable key business initiatives
• Proven ability to lead technical design and architecture discussions, influencing technical strategy and decisions across the organization
• Experience mentoring and coaching junior engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence within the team

Data Engineering Expertise

• Deep understanding of data engineering principles and best practices, including data modeling, observable ETL/ELT processes, data warehousing, and data governance
• Proficiency in data manipulation languages (e.g., SQL/DBT) and programming languages relevant to data engineering (e.g., Python)
• Experience with a variety of data processing frameworks and technologies, including cloud-based data services

Software Engineering Practices

• Experience with software development lifecycle (SDLC) best practices, including version control (e.g., Git), testing, and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD)
• A focus on building high-quality, maintainable, and well-documented code

Collaboration and Communication

• Exceptional communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to effectively communicate technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences
• Proven ability to work effectively in a cross-functional team environment, collaborating with product managers, analysts, and other stakeholders
• Proven effective influencer, capable of driving change outside of your direct team, contributing to the wider engineering community

Education

• A degree in a STEM field (e.g., Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics) or equivalent practical experience

Your Daily Adventure at Storio

• Collaborate effectively within a cross-functional, mission-led team, led by a product manager and engineering manager, contributing to the team’s strategy, roadmap, and OKRs
• Define and champion technical principles and practices to raise the bar on implementing a well-engineered, well-governed data platform that meets the needs of our customers
• Be accountable for the technical health of your team’s codebase, driving continuous improvement and establishing metrics to track progress
• Lead technical solution design on multiple complex initiatives within your team, demonstrated by successful and timely implementation, driving resolutions for complex and difficult problems
• Drive continuous improvement on key metrics such as business value, cost efficiency, speed, and quality of delivery
• Coach a team of data and analytics engineers on best practices in the software development lifecycle, delivering high-quality software through your own work, and fostering a feedback culture within the team
• Influence key decision-making across the data and ML engineering domain on technical approaches to balance delivering near-term commercial impact and building long-term foundations

Our Tech Stack

• Cloud Data Warehouse - Snowflake
• AWS Data Solutions - Kinesis, SNS, SQS, S3, ECS, Lambda
• Data Governance & Quality - Collate & Monte Carlo
• Infrastructure as Code - Terraform
• Data Integration & Transformation - Python, DBT, Fivetran, Airflow
• CI/CD - Github Actions / Jenkins

Nice To Have Experience

• Understanding of various data architecture paradigms (e.g., Data Lakehouse, Data Warehouse, Data Mesh) and their applicability to different business needs
• Experience with data governance principles and practices, ensuring data quality, accuracy, and compliance
• Familiarity with data security best practices and technologies
• Experience in the e-commerce domain

About Us

At Storio Group, we help people hold onto life’s moments. We make personalised photo products that turn fleeting memories into things you can keep, share, and re-live.

Every person at Storio Group helps create our products and shape our company. You will see the impact of your work daily. We invite you to make your mark on our business, products, and customers' lives.

We act with heart by putting people first and valuing diverse perspectives. We give our best and aim for high standards in all we do. We own our work, taking initiative to find solutions. We embrace curiosity, always learning and trying new things. We find the joy in our work and create a positive environment.