Senior Data Engineer

My client is looking for an experienced Senior Data Engineer to join them on a contract basis, taking end‑to‑end ownership of business‑critical data products on their Azure Databricks‑based data platform. This is a hands‑on role embedded directly within a product team, working closely with product managers and lead engineers to raise engineering quality and shape how modern data products are built for analytics and AI.

The Role

As a Senior Data Engineer, you will:

• Design scalable data products within a cross‑functional product team

• Act as a senior technical partner to product managers and lead data engineers

• Own complex, business‑critical data products end‑to‑end

• Build and maintain high‑quality data pipelines using Databricks & Spark

• Convert requirements into clear technical designs and conceptual data models

• Ingest large, complex datasets and automate manual processes

• Improve data quality, observability, reliability, and delivery performance

• Champion a build‑once‑consume‑many culture across the platform

• Collaborate with stakeholders to solve data‑related engineering challenges

• Contribute to engineering standards, best practices, and platform evolution

• Mentor other engineers and raise the overall engineering bar

Tech Environment

My client is actively modernising their platform, moving away from legacy IaaS solutions and building a Databricks‑first Lakehouse. Spark, Delta Lake, CI/CD, and modern DevOps practices are central to how they design and scale data products.

What You’ll Need

• Strong hands‑on experience with Azure Databricks & Spark in production

• 5+ years in data engineering or software engineering with a strong data focus

• Experience building production‑grade pipelines on Azure

• Strong SQL and experience with analytical data models / data warehousing

• Proficiency in Python (Scala a bonus)

• Solid engineering discipline: CI/CD, testing, Git, DevOps for data

• Experience delivering enterprise‑grade data products used by multiple teams

• Ability to communicate clearly with both technical and non‑technical audiences

• Experience with Azure Synapse (dedicated/serverless SQL pools)

• Agile mindset; experience working in Scrum teams

Nice to Have

• Hands‑on experience with Docker, Kubernetes, or container orchestration

Contract Details

• Start: ASAP

• Location: London (with remote flexibility)

• Length: 6 months (likely extension)

• Rate: Competitive, depending on experience