Technical Team Lead: AWS Lakehouse & Data Platform

Zema Global Data Corporation; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Zema Global Data Corporation is seeking a hands-on Technical Team Leader/Manager to lead our UK Data Surface Engineering team. You will write and review code alongside your engineers and take responsibility for day-to-day delivery of our AWS Lakehouse implementation.

This role offers a rare chance to build a new team, establish engineering standards, mentor engineers, and collaborate with global stakeholders across the UK, US, Canada, and India in a fast-growth data-focused environment.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, with at least 2 years in a technical leadership role.
• Strong hands-on experience with AWS services (S3, EC2, EKS, Lambda, Kinesis, Glue, Athena).
• Proficiency in Python and/or Java/Scala for data engineering and backend development.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical delivery of the Data Surface programme phases, coordinating with senior leadership and architects.
• Lead and mentor a small team of software engineers and QA testers, fostering a culture of technical excellence.
• Lead weekly sprint planning, backlog refinement, and delivery against programme milestones using our AI-driven development methodology.
• Stay hands-on in the codebase, designing, building, and reviewing components of the Lakehouse platform alongside the team.
• Establish and enforce engineering standards, code review practices, and CI/CD workflows.
• Collaborate with product owners and stakeholders to translate business requirements into technical solutions.
• Drive technical decision-making around Lakehouse architecture, data ingestion patterns, and processing frameworks.
• Lead the team in making Lakehouse data consumable by AWS AI/ML platforms such as Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker, taking advantage of the open Apache Iceberg format.
• Champion DevOps practices including infrastructure as code, automated testing, and observability.
• Guide the team in utilizing Claude Code and AI-assisted development tools to maximize productivity and code quality.

Skills

Hands-on software engineering

Technical leadership

AWS expertise

Python/Java/Scala

Data engineering concepts

Agile / sprint planning

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science/Engineering

Tools

AWS services (S3, EC2, EKS, Lambda, Kinesis, Glue, Athena)

Apache Iceberg

Kubernetes / EKS

SQL engines (Trino/Presto/Athena)

Job description

Zema Global Data Corporation is seeking a hands-on Technical Team Leader/Manager to lead our UK Data Surface Engineering team. You will write and review code alongside your engineers and take responsibility for day-to-day delivery of our AWS Lakehouse implementation.

This role offers a rare chance to build a new team, establish engineering standards, mentor engineers, and collaborate with global stakeholders across the UK, US, Canada, and India in a fast-growth data-focused environment.