Our client is a large UK housing provider managing over 21,000 homes across England.
The organisation is currently making significant investment in its data and digital capabilities, including the implementation of a modern Microsoft Fabric based data platform and new CRM technologies to improve services across the business.
This role sits at the centre of that transformation, offering the opportunity to help build and lead a brand new data engineering capability within a growing data team.
The Role
We are seeking a Lead Data Engineer to play a key role in developing a modern data platform while leading and mentoring a small engineering team.
Reporting to the Head of Data, you will combine hands on technical delivery with team leadership, helping to design scalable data pipelines, support internal stakeholders, and enable faster insight across the organisation.
This is a unique opportunity to shape how data engineering operates within a business that is early in its data maturity journey.
Key Responsibilities
Leadership & Team Development
Lead and grow a new data engineering function
Line manage and mentor two data engineers
Promote modern engineering practices and tooling
Establish data engineering as a core organisational capability
Data Platform Development
Design, build and maintain scalable data pipelines
Contribute to the development of a Microsoft Fabric data platform
Work with Lakehouse/medallion architecture
Develop ETL/ELT pipelines using PySpark and SQL
Ingest and transform data from SQL systems, flat files, and CSV sources
Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement
Partner with teams across the organisation to deliver high-value data products
Translate technical concepts into clear business language
Support the organisation's wider data maturity journey
Technical Delivery
Deliver data solutions that enable faster time-to-value
Support analytics and reporting teams with reliable, well-structured datasets
Contribute to data modelling and architectural decisions
Technology Stack
The current data platform includes:
Microsoft Fabric
PySpark
T-SQL
Lakehouse/Medallion architecture
Power BI
Current workloads are primarily batch-based, with ambitions to move towards streaming capabilities in the future.
Essential Skills & Experience
Strong background in data engineering
Experience building complex data pipelines
Strong hands-on experience with PySpark and SQL
Experience with Microsoft Fabric, Azure, or modern cloud data platforms
Understanding of data modelling and architectural principles
Experience mentoring or leading engineers
Strong stakeholder engagement and communication skills
Desirable Experience
Microsoft certifications (eg DP-900 or Azure Data certifications)
Experience contributing to data architecture design
Exposure to machine learning pipelines
Experience working within Agile delivery environments
The Ideal Candidate
A hands on technical leader
Comfortable working in organisations early in their data maturity journey
Strong mentoring and coaching capabilities
Able to translate technical delivery into clear business value
Motivated by the opportunity to build a function from the ground up