Senior Data Platform Engineer (AWS, Databricks)

Alto; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work (London HQ)

Career development opportunities

Flexible working arrangements

25 days annual leave

Volunteer/digital detox day

Cycle to work

Private medical insurance

Pension contribution

Bonus up to 10%

Job summary

Alto is seeking a senior data platform engineer to own and scale our data lakehouse and modernise legacy SQL Server estates. You will build the infra and business logic behind data products, partnering with product and commercial teams to turn data into revenue.

The role combines hands-on development with architecture decisions in a hybrid London setting. You will work with Python (pyspark), AWS, Databricks and dbt/Fivetran to deliver scalable data pipelines, apply governance, and drive

Qualifications

• Extensive production data platform experience.
• Strong Python (pyspark) and data pipeline skills.
• AWS and Terraform with IaC as default.
• Experience with lakehouse/warehouse platforms (Databricks preferred).
• Production experience with Fivetran, dbt or similar tools.
• Knowledge of SQL and data modelling for large estates.

Responsibilities

• Own the reliability and performance of our data lakehouse as it scales.
• Build infra and business logic for data products with product/commercial teams.
• Design abstractions and templates for safe data work across ingestion to access.
• Lead migration from legacy SQL Server to modern lakehouse/data stores.
• Write and optimise ETL and contribute to data modelling for analytics and external data products.
• Take ambiguous problems through design, build and production deployment.
• Raise the bar on engineering practices and review designs.

Skills

Python (pyspark)

AWS

Terraform

Databricks

Fivetran/dbt

SQL

Kafka

Kubernetes

ETL/Data modelling

Data platform ops

Education

Tools

ECS

Kubernetes

S3

Job description

London | Hybrid — 2 days per week in our London HQ | Full-time

The Role

Alto Software Group is a B2B SaaS company that powers more than half of all UK housing transactions each year. We create software solutions that connect businesses and consumers, delivering a one-stop shop for estate agents and home builders. Our goal is to drive efficiency, speed up transactions, reduce risk, and improve the end-customer experience. While we’re not a start-up, we have a start-up mindset and want our people to operate with this mindset so that we can achieve our ambitions.

What You’ll Do

• Own the reliability and performance of our data lakehouse as it scales, taking the lead on the operational problems that don’t have an obvious answer.
• Build the infrastructure and business logic behind our data commercialisation products, partnering with product and commercial teams to turn data into revenue.
• Design the abstractions, blueprints and reusable templates that let service and analytics teams work with data safely and consistently, from ingestion through to storage and access — and make them good enough that teams choose them.
• Lead the data side of modernising our legacy monolithic SQL Server database: extracting into the lakehouse and parallel data stores, introducing retention policies, and migrating to modern SQL frameworks.
• Write and optimise ETL processes and contribute to data modelling for both internal analytics and external-facing data products.
• Take work from ambiguous problem statements through design, build and deployment, and stay accountable for it in production.
• Raise the technical bar on how we build — reviewing designs, challenging decisions, and improving our engineering practices as you go.

What You Need to Be Successful

• Deep, hands‑on experience building and running production data platforms and products
• A good level of experience in Python (particularly pyspark) for building data pipelines
• Strong AWS and Terraform experience, with infrastructure-as-code as your default way of working rather than something you’ve picked up.
• Substantial experience with a modern lakehouse or warehouse platform — Databricks ideally, or Snowflake/BigQuery — including the performance, cost and governance decisions that come with running one at scale.
• Real production experience with Fivetran, dbt, or equivalent ingestion and transformation tooling.
• Kafka or similar streaming systems in production, and the judgement to know when event‑driven is the right answer and when it isn’t.
• Strong SQL and sound data modelling instincts, plus experience working with large legacy relational estates and the constraints they bring.
• Comfort with container orchestration (ECS, Kubernetes) and how data workloads actually behave in production.
• A platform mindset — you take as much satisfaction from the paved road as from the pipeline that runs on it.

Our Technology Stack

We believe in using the right tool for the job. Our current stack includes:

Data Platform: Databricks, dbt, Fivetran

Languages: Python, SQL

Databases: SQL Server (legacy, being modernised), plus lakehouse storage on S3

Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS (EventBridge, Kinesis, Lambda, S3, EC2), Terraform (Infrastructure as Code)

Streaming: Kafka

Containers & Orchestration: ECS, Kubernetes

Our Behaviours:

• Explore Boldly: We value engineers who are eager to learn new technologies and stay current with industry trends.
• Bounce Back Stronger: A pragmatic problem‑solver who can navigate ambiguity and find simple solutions to complex challenges.
• Own It Together: A collaborative team member who is willing to share early‑stage work and both give and receive constructive feedback.
• Make It Happen: A person who takes pride in their delivery and is passionate about creating high‑quality software at pace.
• Know Our Customers: You’re a platform engineer who is genuinely interested in your internal customers’ perspective. You strive to understand the purpose of your work so you can deliver the most impactful solutions.

Why Join Alto?

This role offers genuine ownership of a platform at the point where it stops being a project and starts being critical infrastructure — your decisions on architecture, tooling and standards will hold for years. You will have the autonomy to shape how data is built and consumed across the business, and direct visibility with the product and commercial teams turning that data into revenue. With the Databricks migration in flight and data products moving from idea to roadmap, this is the moment where the hardest and most interesting work sits.

• Hybrid - 2 days per week in our London HQ for team collaboration

• Opportunities for career development and advancement within a growing organisation.

• Everyday Flex - greater flexibility over where and when you work

• 25 days annual leave + extra days for years of service

• Day off for volunteering & Digital detox day

• Festive Closure - business closed for period between Christmas and New Year

• Cycle to work and electric car schemes

• Free Calm App membership

• Enhanced Parental leave

• Fertility Treatment Financial Support

• Group Income Protection and private medical insurance

• Gym on‑site in London

• 7.5% pension contribution by the company

• Discretionary annual bonus up to 10% of base salary

• Talent referral bonus up to £5K

We want to make ASG more welcoming, fair and representative every day. We’ll consider everyone who applies for this role in the same way, regardless of your ethnicity, colour, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, age, physical disability, neurodiversity status, family or parental status, or how long you’ve spent unemployed.