Principal Engineer, Data Platforms

Just Eat Holding Limited; City of Westminster; Hybrid; GBP 85,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading food delivery platform is looking for a Principal Engineer to direct the technical strategy for their Data Platforms team. This role involves defining the architecture for data systems and mentoring engineering talent. Candidates should have extensive experience in software and data engineering, with proficiency in modern data technologies. The position requires strong leadership and communication skills to engage with diverse stakeholders effectively. The role is hybrid, combining in-office and remote work.

Benefits

Flexible working hours

Diversity and inclusion initiatives

Supportive team environment

Qualifications

• Experienced software and data engineer at Principal level.
• Expertise in modern data stack technologies.
• Strong understanding of MLOps and data governance.

Responsibilities

• Define technical vision and roadmap for the Data Platform.
• Design architecture for scalable data infrastructure.
• Mentor Senior and Staff Engineers in technical standards.

Skills

Leadership and strategy development

Data engineering proficiency

Technical mentorship

Communication and influence

Tools

Snowflake

BigQuery

Terraform

Airflow

Job description

Job Overview

We are seeking a highly accomplished and visionary Principal Engineer to join our Data Platforms leadership team. You will serve as the top technical authority, reporting directly to the Director of Engineering, and closely pairing with the Head of Engineering. This role defines the technical strategy and architecture that enables our organisation of 50+ engineers to build and operate robust, scalable, and high‑performance data systems. We value your ability to lead on strategy, deliver technical excellence, and care for the continuous growth of our engineering team. Location: Hybrid – 3 days a week from our London or Amsterdam office & 2 days working from home. Reporting to: Director of Engineering.

• Define the long‑term technical vision and roadmap for our modern Data Platform, Mobius (including Data Warehousing, Data Lake, Streaming, and Governance tooling).
• Design and govern the reference architecture for core data infrastructure, ensuring optimal scalability, reliability, and security.
• Act as a hands‑on contributor, tackling the most complex technical challenges and providing code‑level guidance for critical components.
• Establish and enforce technical standards for code quality, observability, and Infrastructure‑as‑Code (IaC) across all data platform teams.
• Act as a technical mentor and coach for Senior and Staff Engineers, raising the technical bar across the organisation.
• Focus on platform engineering principles to improve the developer experience, velocity, and efficiency of all data engineering teams.
• Lead the evaluation, prototyping, and adoption of new data technologies, balancing industry best practices with business needs.
• Extensive experience in software and data engineering, with provable experience operating at a Principal, Staff, or equivalent level.
• Deep proficiency across the modern data stack (Snowflake, BigQuery, Delta Lake, Iceberg, Kafka, Flink).
• Proven track record designing scalable, self‑service data platforms using cloud‑native services (AWS/GCP) and infrastructure automation (Terraform, Ansible).
• Expert proficiency in Python, Scala, or Go, and extensive experience with data transformation frameworks (Airflow, dbt).
• Exceptional ability to synthesise complex requirements into simple, elegant, and maintainable architectural designs.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to influence and align engineering, product, and executive stakeholders.
• Results‑driven mindset with the ability to execute quickly, adapt to change, and thrive in high‑growth, fast‑paced environments.
• Experience in a rapidly scaling organisation focused on building distributed systems.
• Familiarity with data governance, lineage, and observability tools (e.g., Datadog, Prometheus, Open Telemetry).
• Strong understanding of Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) and how data platforms support the full ML lifecycle.
• Then Just Eat Takeaway.com might be the place for you. We’re a leading global online delivery platform, and our vision is to empower everyday convenience. Whether it’s a Friday‑night feast, a post‑gym poke bowl, or grabbing some groceries, our tech platform connects tens of millions of customers with hundreds of thousands of restaurant, grocery and convenience partners across the globe.
• Our teams forge connections internally and work with some of the best‑known brands on the planet, giving us truly international impact in a dynamic environment. Fun, fast‑paced and supportive, the JET culture is about movement, growth and about celebrating every aspect of our JETers.
• We are committed to creating an inclusive culture, encouraging diversity of people and thinking, in which all employees feel they truly belong and can bring their most colourful selves to work every day.