Principal Data Engineer: Lead Data Platform & Analytics

Chroma Recruitment; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 77,000 - 94,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Competitive annual leave allowance

Private medical insurance

Flexible working arrangements

Job summary

Chroma Recruitment in the Manchester area seeks a Principal Data Engineer to own and operate data platforms, combining hands-on coding with leadership for a small data team. You will build and maintain ingestion, orchestration, a BigQuery warehouse, and dbt tooling on GCP, while ensuring secure, well-documented, testable production systems.

You will partner with Engineering and AI/Data Science to turn business needs into a realistic plan, set freshness targets, and guide the data strategy with

Qualifications

• Strong SQL and Python for production data pipelines.
• Experience with cloud data warehouses (BigQuery) and orchestration tools.
• Data modelling for analytics, dimensional design and semantic layers.
• Ownership of a production data platform on a major cloud with IaC and monitoring.
• Knowledge of GDPR and data privacy practices, least-privilege access.

Responsibilities

• Own the data platforms and stay hands-on in code.
• Lead and develop the data team via 1:1s and code reviews.
• Turn business needs into a prioritized backlog and roadmap.
• Review SQL, Python and dbt code; ensure tests and contracts are robust.
• Manage ingestion, orchestration, warehouse, and data services on GCP.
• Plan and coordinate data work with Engineering and AI/Data Science teams.
• Ensure production changes are testable, reversible and well documented.

Skills

Strong SQL and Python

Cloud data warehouse experience

dbt and orchestration tooling

Data modelling for analytics

Security and GDPR best practices

Team leadership or mentoring

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

BigQuery

dbt

Kubernetes

Airbyte

Job description

Chroma Recruitment in the Manchester area seeks a Principal Data Engineer to own and operate data platforms, combining hands-on coding with leadership for a small data team. You will build and maintain ingestion, orchestration, a BigQuery warehouse, and dbt tooling on GCP, while ensuring secure, well-documented, testable production systems.

You will partner with Engineering and AI/Data Science to turn business needs into a realistic plan, set freshness targets, and guide the data strategy with