Senior Data Platform Engineer

trg.; United States; Remote; GBP 90,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

trg. is hiring a Senior Data Platform Engineer to own and evolve the internal data platform. You will build self-serve tooling and standards, while provisioning infrastructure as code and ensuring reliability, observability, and cost efficiency. You’ll work across ML, Analytics and Product teams to deliver ROI-driven capabilities.

The role is fully remote within the UK, offering a startup-like, flat culture with engineering-led practices and a focus on data as a product.

Qualifications

• Senior-level data platform ownership experience is required.
• Hands-on with data platform infra, not just pipelines.
• Experience with Databricks and/or Kafka at scale.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve core data platform infrastructure across Databricks and/or Kafka.
• Build self-serve tooling and standards for data teams.
• Provision and automate infrastructure as code, driving reliability and cost efficiency.
• Collaborate with stakeholders across teams to understand needs and ROI.
• Shape roadmap and actively push for a fast-moving, flat culture.

Skills

Databricks

Kafka

Observability

Infrastructure as Code

Cost optimisation

Data Platform

Tools

MSK

Schema Registry

Terraform

Job description

Tech: Databricks, Airflow, Kafka, dbt, AWS, Terraform

Office: Fully remote

Eng Size: 4 (Data Platform team), ~20 across the wider Data org

We're working with a fast-growing consumer marketplace platform, backed by a major global e-commerce group, known for its startup energy, flat culture and genuine investment in engineering practices. Their data platform has already matured significantly, they run on data mesh principles and treat data as a product, and now they're looking for someone to help push that maturity even further.

They need a hands-on Senior Data Platform Engineer to genuinely build and own the platform, not just work on top of it. This is a builder's role: provisioning, architecture, tooling, and self-serve capability that other teams across the business rely on. You'll be part of a small platform team sitting alongside Data Engineering, Analytics and Data Governance, and you'll have real influence over how the platform evolves.

What you'll do:

• Own and evolve core platform infrastructure across Databricks and/or Kafka, treating internal teams (ML, Analytics, Product, Marketing, Finance) as your users
• Build self-serve tooling, paved paths and standards that reduce the barrier to entry for teams working with data
• Provision and automate infrastructure as code, and drive platform reliability, observability and cost efficiency
• Collaborate cross-functionally to understand real stakeholder needs, prioritise ruthlessly, and think in terms of ROI rather than just technical delivery
• Contribute to a genuinely flat, fast-moving culture, push back, ask why, and help shape the roadmap rather than just executing it

What they need:

• Senior-level experience genuinely owning data platform infrastructure, not just building pipelines on top of one
• Deep, hands-on expertise in either Databricks (asset bundles, access management, compute optimisation, governance) or Kafka (MSK, schema registry, observability at scale)
• A product mindset: you ask why before how, and think about internal teams as users of what you build
• Experience working cross-functionally across a genuinely broad set of stakeholders, not just one team or domain
• Pragmatism over perfectionism, comfortable shipping and iterating rather than chasing the theoretically ideal solution
• Startup, scaleup or consumer tech background strongly preferred

Bonus: experience with data contracts and governance tooling (Monte Carlo, Open Data Contract Standard), Terraform/IaC, and modern AI-assisted development tooling (Claude Code, Cursor).