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 design and build its centralized data platform. This fully remote role emphasizes developing scalable data pipelines for AI and requires strong experience in data engineering, particularly with Python, SQL, and Azure. The position offers ownership of architectural decisions and an opportunity to shape the data function significantly. The ideal candidate should be comfortable working independently and dealing with sensitive data.

Benefits

Private Healthcare

Bonus

Qualifications

• 5+ years experience as a Data Engineer in production environments.
• Solid understanding of AI data lifecycles and data governance.
• Experience working with sensitive or regulated data.

Responsibilities

• Design and build a centralized data platform for AI development.
• Create scalable data pipelines for unstructured datasets.
• Implement dataset versioning, monitoring, and data quality checks.

Skills

Strong experience as a Data Engineer

Strong Python

Strong SQL

Experience with Azure-based data platforms

Experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes)

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.