Principal Data Engineer (m/f/d)

Thoughtworks; City of Amsterdam (NY); Hybrid; USD 139,000 - 209,000; Full time

Job summary

Thoughtworks seeks Principal Data Engineer leaders to drive data engineering initiatives for clients, combining deep technical mastery with strategic business alignment.

You will lead a senior team, influence outcomes, and travel to client sites as needed, shaping data platforms, governance and production deployment. You remain hands-on while guiding delivery and growth in the market.

Qualifications

• Extensive pre-sales experience with independently driving complex pursuits.
• Hands-on in one or two core technologies alongside leading a team.
• Experience in Domain-Driven Design for enterprise contexts.
• Big-data architectures, building and operating data pipelines, and distributed storage.
• Deep understanding of data modeling and modern data engineering tools and platforms, including cloud warehousing.
• Experience designing real-time, low-latency streaming solutions (cloud and on-prem).
• Experience with data governance and security policies; knowledge of MLOps and data science concepts.

Responsibilities

• Clarify requirements with sales and pre-sales; design viable solutions for complex pursuits with executive stakeholders.
• Establish a clear vision for data paradigm and practices aligned with business strategy.
• Collaborate with executives to understand strategic objectives and leverage data for insights.
• Provide client-facing technical leadership as a data domain expert.
• Design and develop intricate data processing pipelines; address client problems.
• Collaborate with data scientists to design scalable model production.
• Write clean, iterative code using TDD; enable deployment and operation of data pipelines.
• Lead data governance, security, and privacy initiatives to support compliance.
• Grow capability by mentoring engineers and expanding the team; lead through influence and thought leadership.

Skills

Pre-sales

Data architectures

Data pipelines

DD design

Real-time streaming

MLOps knowledge

Data governance

Security & privacy

Leadership

Hands-on coding

Tools

Cloud warehousing tools

Distributed processing platforms

Job description

Principal data engineers at Thoughtworks are strategic leaders who spearhead data engineering initiatives, tackle complex business challenges and uncover transformative insights. They possess a deep understanding of a client's business ecosystem and partner with executives to align technology strategies with business objectives. By contextualizing emerging trends and Thoughtworks' exploration, they expand the impact of data engineering within the client organization.

They draw upon their profound expertise in developing modern data architectures and infrastructure for the management of data applications. Effective collaboration is paramount, as they adeptly convey their discoveries to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. They stay abreast of industry advancements, ensure data quality and security, and provide mentorship to team members. At Thoughtworks, data engineers leverage deep technical knowledge to solve complex business problems, making a significant impact on client success.

This is a client-facing, builder's leadership role. You will start with a small, senior team and grow it through technical depth, delivery excellence and thought leadership, rather than inheriting a large organisation to manage. The role is based in Germany and requires regular travel to client sites, up to approximately 50% of your time.

Job responsibilities

• You will collaborate with sales and pre-sales to clarify requirements, design viable solutions and independently drive complex pursuits with technical and executive stakeholders.
• You will establish a clear vision and direction for the data paradigm and practices, aligning it with the overall business strategy.
• You will collaborate with executive-level stakeholders to understand their strategic objectives and identify opportunities to leverage data and data quality.
• You will consult on complex data platform programs, synchronizing cross-cutting architectural concerns and providing client-facing technical leadership as a data subject-matter expert.
• You will create, design and develop intricate data processing pipelines, addressing clients' most challenging problems.
• You will collaborate with data scientists to design scalable implementation and production of their models.
• You will write clean and iterative code based on TDD and leverage continuous-delivery practices to deploy, support and operate data pipelines.
• You will design and implement the strategy around data governance, data security and data privacy to support business and compliance requirements.
• You will grow the capability around you, mentoring engineers and building out the next generation of the team.
• You lead through influence rather than headcount: growing capability and raising delivery standards inside the organisation, while building our presence in the market through thought leadership, ecosystem initiatives and client-facing points of view.

Job qualifications

Technical Skills

• You must have extensive pre-sales experience and a proven ability to independently drive complex pursuits and create winning commercial proposals.
• You are equally happy coding and leading a team to implement a solution, and you stay hands-on in at least one or two core technologies.
• You have experience in system design using Domain-Driven Design for enterprise organisations with various domains.
• Working with data excites you; you have created big-data architecture, can build and operate data pipelines, and maintain data storage within distributed systems.
• You have a deep understanding of data modeling and experience with modern data engineering tools and platforms, along with cloud warehousing tools.
• You have built and deployed large-scale data pipelines and data-centric applications using distributed storage and processing platforms in a production setting.
• You have experience designing and developing real-time and low-latency data streaming solutions (cloud and locally hosted).
• You have experience with data visualization techniques and can communicate the insights as per the audience.
• You have experience defining and implementing data governance and security policies, and knowledge of MLOps and data science concepts.

Professional Skills

• You have worked in a consultancy or professional-services environment within the last five years, driving data and AI engagements end to end (recent examples matter more than historical ones).
• You can point to data and AI pursuits you helped win and shape within the last three to five years, including deals from around €3M upwards, and you can speak concretely to their commercial shape, trade-offs and delivery.
• You have grown a practice, capability or go-to-market asset, for example a reusable accelerator taken to market, combining solutioning, sales and delivery with tangible business outcomes.
• You stay genuinely hands-on: you can build alongside your team when it counts and are comfortable being the deepest engineer in the room.
• You bring significant hands-on and leadership experience in data and AI (typically 10+ years) and, above all, the appetite to keep building: growing accounts, teams and capability rather than only overseeing them.
• You have fluent German skills (C1)

Learning & Development

There is no one-size-fits-all career path at Thoughtworks: however you want to develop your career is entirely up to you. But we also balance autonomy with the strength of our cultivation culture. This means your career is supported by interactive tools, numerous development programs and teammates who want to help you grow. We see value in helping each other be our best and that extends to empowering our employees in their career journeys.

Responsible Use of AI in Recruitment

At Thoughtworks, we use AI tools to support our recruitment team with administrative tasks such as drafting communications, scheduling interviews and writing job descriptions. Crucially, our AI tools do not screen, assess, rank or make hiring decisions. Every application is reviewed by our team and all selection decisions are made exclusively by our interviewers and hiring managers. We are committed to fairness and responsible AI. We actively manage our AI systems by testing, monitoring for biased outcomes and implementing mitigation measures. We hold our third-party vendors to these same high standards through a rigorous governance process. For additional information, please see our full Thoughtworks AI Policy for Recruitment.

About Thoughtworks

Thoughtworks is a dynamic and inclusive community of bright and supportive colleagues who are revolutionizing tech. As a leading technology consultancy, we’re pushing boundaries through our purposeful and impactful work. For 30+ years, we’ve delivered extraordinary impact together with our clients by helping them solve complex business problems with technology as the differentiator. Bring your brilliant expertise and commitment for continuous learning to Thoughtworks. Together, let’s be extraordinary.