Tech Lead - Data

Zinkworks; Athlone; On-site; EUR 95,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Zinkworks is forming a dedicated delivery squad for a high-growth international client in Ireland. You will lead data engineering efforts, owning the data foundations, ingestion, modeling and quality layers to enable proactive issue detection and remediation.

The role centers on building scalable, compliant pipelines for real-time and batch data while guiding a multidisciplinary team. You'll partner with a Solution Architect and ML/backend/frontend specialists, leveraging Google Cloud tools and

Qualifications

• Significant commercial data engineering experience, including time technically leading a team or workstream.
• Strong Python and SQL.
• Hands-on experience building batch and near-real-time pipelines on a cloud platform, ideally Google Cloud (e.g. BigQuery, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, Composer/Airflow).
• Strong data modelling skills, including joining and reconciling data from multiple sources.
• Experience implementing data quality, freshness and completeness monitoring.
• Experience with infrastructure as code (e.g. Terraform) and CI/CD for data pipelines.
• Clear communication with client stakeholders, and experience mentoring engineers.

Responsibilities

• Lead the squad technically: set engineering standards, guide design decisions, review code and unblock the team, working with the Solution Architect on design authority and integration contracts.
• Build ingestion for multiple feeds, including high-frequency telemetry with historical backfill, customer support data, business data and third-party performance data.
• Design a canonical data model with cross-source validation.
• Build data quality, freshness and completeness monitoring, and serve curated marts and feature pipelines for the ML team.
• Scale ingestion to high-volume, granular data with geographic enrichment and aggregation hierarchies.
• Automate business data feeds from source systems and build data marts that support strategic commercial decisions.
• Partner with platform engineering on the Google Cloud landing zone, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, observability and cost guardrails.

Skills

Python

SQL

Data engineering

Team leadership

Tools

Terraform

BigQuery

Dataflow

Pub/Sub

Airflow

Job description

About Zinkworks

Zinkworks partners with leading Telecommunications and Financial Services organizations to modernize legacy systems, migrate mission-critical platforms to the cloud, and engineer AI-driven automation. From OSS transformation to rApp development and network intelligence, our teams simplify complexity and turn it into competitive advantage. Based in Ireland and operating across the EU, UK, and US, Zinkworks combines deep domain expertise with delivery excellence to help clients modernize faster and operate smarter.

About the Project

We're forming a dedicated delivery squad for a high-growth international technology client. The goal is to move customer support from reactive to proactive. The new platform will detect service issues from the client's operational data, assess their business impact, trigger remediation, and let affected customers know before they have to ask.

It's a greenfield, data- and AI-driven build on Google Cloud, delivered in phases. It starts with incident detection and human-approved remediation, then adds more granular detection and broader automated actions, and ends with a closed-loop system that acts autonomously within defined safety limits. You'll join a squad of around nine people, including a Solution Architect, data, ML, backend, frontend, UX, QA and platform engineers, working in the client's own tooling (Jira, Git, CI/CD).

The Role

You'll be the technical lead for the squad and the owner of its data foundations. Every detection, score and remedy in this platform depends on data arriving on time, joined correctly and trusted, so you'll design and build the ingestion, modelling and quality layers while guiding the engineering team day to day alongside the Solution Architect.

What You'll Do

• Lead the squad technically: set engineering standards, guide design decisions, review code and unblock the team, working with the Solution Architect on design authority and integration contracts.

• Build ingestion for multiple feeds, including high-frequency telemetry with historical backfill, customer support data, business data and third-party performance data.

• Design a canonical data model with cross-source validation.

• Build data quality, freshness and completeness monitoring, and serve curated marts and feature pipelines for the ML team.

• Scale ingestion to high-volume, granular data with geographic enrichment and aggregation hierarchies.

• Automate business data feeds from source systems and build data marts that support strategic commercial decisions.

• Partner with platform engineering on the Google Cloud landing zone, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, observability and cost guardrails.

What You'll Bring

• Significant commercial data engineering experience, including time technically leading a team or workstream.

• Strong Python and SQL.

• Hands-on experience building batch and near-real-time pipelines on a cloud platform, ideally Google Cloud (e.g. BigQuery, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, Composer/Airflow).

• Strong data modelling skills, including joining and reconciling data from multiple sources.

• Experience implementing data quality, freshness and completeness monitoring.

• Experience with infrastructure as code (e.g. Terraform) and CI/CD for data pipelines.

• Clear communication with client stakeholders, and experience mentoring engineers.

Nice to Have

• Experience building feature pipelines for ML models.

• Tools such as dbt, or experience working with high-volume device or telemetry data.

• Background in telecoms or telemetry data.

• Experience in client-facing consultancy or managed delivery environments.

Inclusion & Diversity at Zinkworks

At Zinkworks, we are deeply committed to fostering a culture of diversity, inclusion, and belonging. We believe that our strength lies in the unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences of our team members. By embracing an inclusive environment, we empower innovation and collaboration across all levels of our organisation. Based in Ireland, we are proud to support and engage with our local communities through meaningful initiatives that promote equity and opportunity. Our commitment extends beyond the workplace, as we actively contribute to creating a more inclusive and connected society for all.