Lead Data Engineer

Hybrid Working - 2-4 day per month in the office (East London / Essex)

Salary to £75k

A Lead Data Engineer is required for a transformational role. With Fabric already in place, the focus is now on maturing the data architectural environment from Bronze through to Gold over the next 12-18 months - improving architecture, data quality, and overall platform capability.

This is a hands-on leadership role, acting as the senior technical escalation point while helping shape best practice, refine existing pipelines, and drive data modernisation across a complex data landscape. This is more of a Technical Leadership than people Leadership role, though the director would be happy for someone inclined towards both or that wants to add on the people in time.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build and optimise scalable data pipelines within Microsoft Fabric (Lakehouse, Data Engineering, Data Warehouse, Data Integration)
• Refine and enhance existing pipelines and architecture to align with best practice
• Lead the transition of the platform from Bronze to Gold standard
• Develop and fine-tune complex SQL queries, transformations, and data models
• Support and troubleshoot data issues impacting reporting (e.g. Power BI refresh failures)
• Take ownership of data quality, governance, and platform reliability
• Act as the technical escalation point for a team of Data Engineers
• Lead, mentor, and support a small team (3 engineers) - negotiable if you'd prefer to remain technically oriented.
• Work across multiple data sources (enterprise systems and bespoke applications) feeding into a Lakehouse
• Engage stakeholders across the business to improve data quality and consistency

Required Experience

• Strong hands-on SQL expertise, including performance tuning
• Proven experience with Microsoft Fabric and Synapse (design, architecture, implementation)
• Experience working with Lakehouse architecture and multiple data sources
• Demonstrable experience modernising data platforms (e.g. Bronze ? Gold maturity) or consolidating data into a central platform
• Strong understanding of data engineering principles, governance, and data quality
• Experience delivering and supporting production-grade data solutions
• Ability to act as a senior technical escalation point and lead delivery
• Strong stakeholder engagement skills, particularly around data quality challenges
• Microsoft certifications (e.g. DP-600, DP-900)
• Experience managing or mentoring engineers (or readiness to step into leadership
• Exposure to DevOps / CI-CD practices within data engineering
• Experience in complex or enterprise environments