Lead Data Engineer

Lead Data Engineer | £80,000–£90,000

Manchester | Hybrid

Got a few strong opinions on how a data platform should be built? Good. You’ll get to put them to work here.

An established online business is moving its data estate from on-prem SQL into Azure, and you’ll lead the engineering behind it. You’ll own the roadmap, make the architecture and tooling calls and stay close enough to the code to see your decisions through.

Microsoft Fabric is on the table too. The interest is there; the foundations and route to adoption still need building. You’ll help decide where it fits and what needs to happen first.

There’s a real appetite for AI across the business. They want someone who’ll spot opportunities, experiment and get useful ideas into practice. That could mean automating engineering work, improving how the platform operates or solving a problem elsewhere in the business.

You’ll have room to explore, alongside the judgement to choose the right tool for the job. Sometimes that’ll be AI. Sometimes SQL will do it better.

What you’ll be doing:

• Owning the Azure data platform roadmap, architecture and tooling decisions.
• Getting hands-on with SQL, Azure Data Factory and ETL/ELT pipelines across the systems that keep the business running.
• Leading the move from on-prem SQL into Azure, building reliable pipelines and data models that can grow with the business.
• Raising engineering standards across the team, covering data quality, governance, automated deployments and production reliability.

What we need:

• Strong SQL and Azure data engineering experience, with pipelines you’ve built and supported in production.
• Experience modernising an existing data estate and working through a cloud migration.
• The confidence to make technical calls, challenge an approach and help other engineers get better.
• Curiosity about AI and the judgement to turn that interest into something useful.

Fabric experience would be welcome, especially if you’ve helped work out the steps towards adoption.

The tech:

SQL / Azure / Azure Data Factory / ETL & ELT / Data Modelling / CI/CD

Microsoft Fabric being explored.

What you get:

£80–90k, Manchester hybrid and a substantial platform programme to lead. You’ll have a say in where the investment goes, freedom to test ideas and the opportunity to see your decisions running in production.