Lead Data Engineer

Lead Data Engineer | AI Startup | London (Hybrid) | £100,000 - £150,000 + Equity

KDR are working with a well-funded, London-based AI startup looking for a Lead Data Engineer to take ownership of their data engineering capability.

This is a particularly interesting opportunity for someone who enjoys building things from the ground up, working with highly technical people and having a genuine influence over the direction of a product.

The business is still relatively early in its journey, but has an experienced founding team, strong financial backing and ambitious plans for growth. They've invested heavily in engineering from the outset and are building sophisticated AI-driven software to tackle complex, real-world problems.

As Lead Data Engineer, you'll be the senior technical voice for Data Engineering, working closely with engineering leadership to design the architecture, build the underlying systems and establish how data engineering operates as the business scales.

This is a hands-on role with significant autonomy, suited to someone who wants to take real ownership rather than inherit an established platform and simply maintain it.

What you'll do

Own Data Engineering:

Take responsibility for the technical direction of Data Engineering, making key architectural decisions and establishing the foundations for future growth.

Build & Scale the Platform:

Design and develop scalable data systems, working across ingestion, processing, storage and the infrastructure supporting AI-driven products.

Work on Complex Engineering Problems:

Get involved in challenging areas of database design, data modelling, performance optimisation and distributed systems.

Partner with Engineering:

Work closely with Backend, AI and Product Engineers to ensure data architecture supports the wider product and its evolving requirements.

Drive Engineering Standards:

Introduce strong practices around reliability, testing, observability and performance, helping establish a mature engineering environment as the business grows.

Shape the Future Team:

Play an important role in defining the future direction of the data function, including the technologies, engineering standards and people needed as it expands.

What you'll bring

You'll have a strong background in Data Engineering, ideally with experience building complex data systems within a startup, scale-up or similarly demanding product engineering environment.

They're particularly interested in engineers with strong academic foundations, excellent technical problem-solving ability and a track record of progressing quickly and taking on greater responsibility.

We're looking for:

• 5+ years of experience, predominantly within Data Engineering
• Strong Python skills and experience building production-grade data systems
• Deep understanding of relational databases, ideally PostgreSQL, alongside NoSQL technologies
• Experience designing data architectures, data models and scalable pipelines
• Knowledge of distributed processing and orchestration tools such as Spark, Kafka or Airflow
• Experience with vector databases, search technologies or data infrastructure supporting AI applications
• Strong understanding of database performance, optimisation and system reliability
• Experience making architectural decisions and owning technical delivery
• Exposure to cloud platforms such as GCP, AWS or Azure (They are on GCP)

Experience with AI/ML platforms, real-time data processing, vector search or complex backend engineering would be particularly interesting.

Beyond the technical skills, they're looking for someone ambitious, intellectually curious and comfortable taking ownership in an environment where priorities can change quickly.

Previous startup experience is particularly valuable. You'll need to be comfortable making decisions, challenging ideas and building solutions without always having an established process to follow.

Why this one is interesting

You'll be joining a business where engineering is central to the product, working alongside technically strong colleagues and founders with significant experience building and scaling businesses.

There's a real opportunity to influence the architecture from an early stage, establish the data engineering function and potentially grow into a broader leadership position as the business expands.

It's an ambitious environment with high expectations, but also the autonomy, backing and technical challenges to make it an exciting next step for the right person.

Package

• £100,000 - £150,000 base salary
• Equity options
• Private healthcare
• Hybrid working,

Please click apply if you think this role seems like a good match!