Senior Data Engineer

Innova Recruitment; Remote; GBP 70,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A UK-based technology company is seeking a Senior Data Engineer to build a centralized data platform focused on AI development. This pivotal, hands-on role involves designing data architecture, creating scalable pipelines, and ensuring data quality and compliance from day one. The ideal candidate will have strong experience in data engineering with expertise in Python, SQL, and Azure, as well as knowledge of data governance and AI data lifecycles. This role offers significant influence in shaping the data function within the company.

Benefits

Private Healthcare

Bonus

Qualifications

• Strong experience as a Data Engineer in production environments.
• Strong Python and SQL skills.
• Experience building data platforms that directly support AI or ML teams.
• Solid understanding of AI data lifecycles, including datasets and versioning.
• Experience with Azure-based data platforms.
• Experience with containerization, including Docker and Kubernetes.
• Strong understanding of data governance, lineage, and compliance.
• Ability to work independently and make technical decisions.

Responsibilities

• Designing and building the company's first centralized data platform.
• Creating scalable data pipelines for large, unstructured datasets.
• Building ETL/ELT workflows for AI-ready datasets.
• Implementing dataset versioning and data lifecycle management.
• Supporting AI teams with training and validation data.
• Embedding data quality checks and monitoring.
• Working closely with MLOps to support model monitoring.
• Ensuring data privacy, security, and compliance.

Skills

Data Engineering in production environments

Python

SQL

Building data platforms for AI/ML teams

Understanding AI data lifecycles

Azure data platforms

Containerization (Docker, Kubernetes)

Data governance and compliance

Independent work and technical decisions

Job description

Senior Data Engineer - 100% Remote

£70,000 - £80,000 per annum

Private Healthcare and Bonus

We’re hiring a Senior Data Engineer for a UK-based technology company operating at the intersection of healthcare and legal technology.

This role exists to build the core data platform that underpins AI and machine learning work. The business is moving beyond fragmented data and needs someone who can design and deliver a structured, secure and compliant data foundation that AI teams can rely on.

This is a greenfield role with real ownership.

The Role

You’ll be responsible for designing and building the company’s first centralised data platform, with a clear focus on enabling AI development rather than analytics or BI.

Working closely with AI Engineers and MLOps Engineers, you’ll ensure datasets are structured, versioned and reproducible so models can be trained, evaluated, monitored and retrained reliably.

This role is hands‑on and requires someone comfortable making architectural decisions with minimal direction.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Designing and building a greenfield data architecture from scratch
• Creating scalable data pipelines for large, text-heavy and unstructured datasets
• Building ETL / ELT workflows that produce AI‑ready datasets
• Implementing dataset versioning, reproducibility and data lifecycle management
• Supporting AI teams with training, validation and test data splits
• Embedding data quality checks, monitoring, lineage and drift detection
• Working closely with MLOps to support model monitoring and retraining
• Ensuring data privacy, security and compliance are built in from day one
• Using infrastructure‑as‑code and CI / CD practices for data pipelines

What They’re Looking For

• Strong experience as a Data Engineer in production environments
• Strong Python and SQL
• Experience building data platforms that directly support AI or ML teams
• Solid understanding of AI data lifecycles (datasets, versioning, drift, reproducibility)
• Experience with Azure‑based data platforms
• Experience with containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Strong understanding of data governance, lineage and compliance
• Comfortable working independently and making technical decisions

This is not a BI or stakeholder reporting role.

They’re not looking for someone focused on dashboards, executive reporting or analytics platforms. The data platform exists primarily to support AI model development and monitoring.

Experience working with sensitive or regulated data is important.

Why This Role

• First Data Engineer in the business
• Ownership of tooling, standards and architecture
• Direct influence on how AI is delivered in production
• Opportunity to shape a wider data function over time

If this sounds like something you’d like to explore, feel free to apply or message directly for more detail.