Senior Data Engineer (Remote within the UK)

Chip UK; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 80,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Discretionary Bonus

Workplace pension

Private medical insurance

Employee Assistance Programme

Cycle to work scheme

Season ticket loan

ChipX subscription

Flexible working arrangements

28 days holiday + bank holidays

Annual training budget

Fitness benefit

Company laptop

Job summary

Chip is seeking a Senior Data Engineer to scale our data platform and empower data-driven decisions across the business. You will co-own architecture for ingestion, modelling, and the semantic layer, while guiding a growing data engineering team.

You'll work with Databricks, governance in Unity Catalog, and build self-service patterns to reduce bottlenecks, while mentoring engineers and setting engineering standards.

Qualifications

• Must have built and scaled data products in a growing environment.
• Deep, hands-on Databricks expertise end to end (workspace, compute, governance).
• Strong data modelling skills including medallion (Bronze/Silver/Gold) and Kimball/Star Schema.
• Fluent in Git workflows with code reviews and branching.
• Proficient in Python, PySpark and SQL with scalable performance.
• Experience with SQL/NoSQL databases and data governance basics.
• Terraform or IaC experience for cloud infrastructure.
• Mentoring and leadership of engineers in a team setting.
• Ability to own architecture decisions and defend trade-offs.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and run scalable, secure data pipelines across multiple sources.
• Co-own architecture decisions across ingestion, modelling, and the presentation layer.
• Design and evolve medallion architecture as the platform matures.
• Define engineering standards including naming, partitioning, and testing strategy.
• Apply Databricks best practices and Infrastructure as Code across the platform.
• Own governance patterns in Unity Catalog and access models.
• Set technical governance standards the team follows.
• Enable downstream consumers with self-service patterns.
• Provide technical leadership, mentor engineers, and review code.

Skills

Data engineering

Databricks

Data modelling

Git

Python

PySpark

SQL

Terraform

Architecture ownership

Data governance

Tools

Kafka

Unity Catalog

Job description

As a Senior Data Engineer at Chip, you'll help bring our data platform to the next level and empower Chip to be a truly data-driven business. You'll co-own the architecture of our data platform alongside our Analytics Engineer — not just implementing designs, but making the calls on how ingestion, modelling, and the semantic layer should actually work. You'll also provide technical leadership across the wider data engineering team as we grow.

What you can expect to be doing:

Architecture & Pipeline Design

• Design, build, and run scalable, secure data pipelines across multiple sources — with an eye on compute sizing and query performance

• Co-own architecture decisions across ingestion, modelling, and the presentation layer — defining how the platform should work, not just building to spec

• Design and evolve our medallion architecture (Bronze, Silver, Gold) as the platform matures

Engineering Standards

• Define more detailed engineering standards — naming conventions, partitioning, testing strategy, contract templates

• Apply Databricks best practices and Infrastructure as Code across the platform

Data Governance

• Own governance patterns in Unity Catalog — permissions, access models, and how we handle sensitive data

• Set technical governance standards the rest of the team builds against

Enablement & Self-Service

• Enable downstream consumers with self-service patterns, so the data team isn't the bottleneck for every request

Technical Leadership & Mentoring

• Provide technical leadership across the data engineering team — mentoring other engineers, reviewing code, and raising the engineering bar

What we’re looking for:

• Data engineering: You've built and scaled complex data products in a growing environment — you've seen platforms mature past their early ad hoc stage and know what that evolution actually takes.

• Databricks expertise: Deep, hands‑on knowledge of the Databricks platform end to end — workspace and compute configuration, governance, orchestration, user management, engineering best practices.

• Data modelling: You're comfortable designing schemas and data models, including medallion architecture and Kimball/Star Schema concepts (Fact and Dimension tables), from the ground up.

• Git: You're fluent in Git workflows — branching, troubleshooting, code reviews.

• Python/PySpark/SQL: You write clean, efficient code across all three, and you understand how it performs at scale.

• Database management: Experience with SQL/NoSQL databases (e.g., Redshift, Postgres, MongoDB), with a solid grounding in database fundamentals — indexing, performance, design trade‑offs.

• Terraform: You have experience in managing infrastructure as code with Terraform.

• Mentoring: You've supported and grown less experienced engineers before, and enjoy doing it.

• Architecture ownership: You design systems, not just implement them — you can reason through trade‑offs and defend a decision.

• Data governance: You understand PII handling and governance patterns, and build them into your designs by default.

Nice to have:

• Previous experience in fintech

• Experience re‑architecting a data platform from the ground up

• Experience building and training AI/ML models

• Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional (or equivalent)

• Proficiency in building streaming data processing systems

• Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud services (AWS, GCP)

What we’re really looking for:

We’re looking for someone who’s genuinely excited about Chip and energised by the opportunity to help build the future of wealth, making saving, investing and pensions simpler and more accessible for everyone.

We work in a regulated space, so the bar is high. But we’ve built a team of smart, thoughtful people who care about doing great work and enjoy doing it together. Technical skills matter, obviously. But they’re not the only thing we hire for.

We want real people. People with interests, perspective and personality. The best teams are made up of individuals who bring different experiences into the room, not just polished CVs and good interview answers.

So alongside the technical side, we’ll be looking for empathy, self‑awareness, sound judgement, resilience and a collaborative mindset. People who are good to work with, especially when things get hard.

Working Hours

• Monday to Thursday: 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM

• Friday: 8:00 AM – 4:00 PM (Start your weekend early!)

Enjoy a structured yet balanced workweek, with an early Friday finish to kickstart your weekend!

PERKS

• £70,000 - £80,000 per annum

• Discretionary Performance-Related Annual Bonus.

• Workplace pension scheme - We invest in your future with a workplace pension scheme, contributing 5% on earnings up to £50,000. Plan ahead with confidence while you grow your career!

• Private medical insurance (medical history disregarded)

• Employee Assistance Programme

• Cycle to work scheme

• Season ticket loan

• Free ChipX subscription for UK-based employees

• We are an equal-opportunity employer and value diversity

• Flexible working arrangements

• 28 days holiday plus bank holidays, plus the days between Christmas and New Year

• Annual training budget for courses, workshops, or conferences to help you advance your career.

• £30 per month Chip Fitness Benefit to suit your Mental/Physical Wellbeing

• Company laptop

• Opportunity to have a huge impact on our product while fast-tracking your knowledge, responsibility and skills in a high-growth fintech startup

Our Interview Process:

1. Video screen with someone from our Talent team

2. Video interview with the hiring manager

3. Final interview with VP of Engineering

We’re committed to making our recruitment process accessible to everyone. If you require any reasonable adjustments at any stage of the application or interview process, please let us know at [e-mail] and we’ll be happy to accommodate.

About Chip

Chip’s mission is to make your life wealthy

We’re building the wealth super app of the future. An app to build your long‑term wealth across savings, investments and pensions.

We use technology to break down barriers so users can invest like the ultra‑wealthy, giving them one simple place to manage, grow and protect their wealth.

The Sunday Times listed Chip as the 6th fastest growing tech company in Britain… and we’re not slowing down. Chip serves over 400,000 active customers and looks after over £6billion in assets. These customers trust us to build the most amazing product we can, so working at Chip comes with real purpose.

Chip is being built by a fast‑growing team of designers, developers, customer service professionals, marketers, banking experts, and entrepreneurs. Our funding story though is a little different. Chip is one of the most crowd‑funded businesses in Europe, having raised over £50m from 29,000 investors, over 9 years. Crowdfunding is in our DNA and only Brewdog has more investors than Chip.

Our vision

To be the most personal digital wealth manager in the UK

Who we are

Chip has a creative and diverse team of 180, from all different backgrounds and industries. We’re driven and passionate people, but no one takes themselves too seriously.

Don’t just take our word for it. We have a few awards under our belt, including Best Personal Finance App at the 2022, 2024 & 2025 British Bank Awards.

Be ACCOUNTABLE

Everything you do matters, Care about the end result, Challenge the norm, Disagree, yet commit to making it happen once a decision has been made, Do the best job possible

Be BOLD

Share our Ambition and do your bit to achieve it, Innovate: challenge the norm, break the mould and make it happen, Set goals that truly align with our mission, Do your best for our customers

Be COLLABORATIVE

Work cross‑functionally - we win as a team, Build strong relationships based on trust, Treat others fairly and respectfully, Hold others to account, Be supportive and inclusive, Have fun together

Equal Opportunities

We are passionate and committed to our people and go beyond the rhetoric of diversity and inclusion. You will be working in an inclusive environment and be encouraged to bring your whole self to work. We will do all that we can to help you successfully balance your work and home life. As a growing business we will encourage you to develop your professional and personal aspirations, enjoy new experiences, and learn from the talented people you will be working with. It’s talent that matters to us and we encourage applications from people irrespective of their gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability status or caring responsibilities.

Note to Agencies

Chip does not accept unsolicited CVs from recruiters or employment agencies in response to any of our live roles on our career page. Chip will not consider or agree to payment of any referral compensation or recruiter fee relating to these unsolicited CVs. Chip explicitly reserves the right to hire those candidate(s) without any financial obligation to the recruiter or agency. Any unsolicited CVs, including those submitted to hiring managers, are deemed to be the property of Chip.