Senior Data Engineer

• As a Senior Data Engineer at Chip, you’ll help bring our data platform to the next level and empower Chip to be a truly data-driven business
• You’ll co-own the architecture of our data platform alongside our Analytics Engineer — not just implementing designs, but making the calls on how ingestion, modelling, and the semantic layer should actually work
• You’ll also provide technical leadership across the wider data engineering team as we grow
• Design, build, and run scalable, secure data pipelines across multiple sources — with an eye on compute sizing and query performance
• Co-own architecture decisions across ingestion, modelling, and the presentation layer — defining how the platform should work, not just building to spec
• Design and evolve our medallion architecture (Bronze, Silver, Gold) as the platform matures
• Define more detailed engineering standards — naming conventions, partitioning, testing strategy, contract templates
• Apply Databricks best practices and Infrastructure as Code across the platform
• Own governance patterns in Unity Catalog — permissions, access models, and how we handle sensitive data
• Set technical governance standards the rest of the team builds against
• Enable downstream consumers with self-service patterns, so the data team isn’t the bottleneck for every request
• Provide technical leadership across the data engineering team — mentoring other engineers, reviewing code, and raising the engineering bar
• Working Hours:
• Monday to Thursday: 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM
• Friday: 8:00 AM – 4:00 PM (Start your weekend early!)

Benefits

• 28 Days of Holidays - Plus Public Holidays: Take 28 days to unwind and recharge, plus all public holidays! We prioritize your work-life balance so you can enjoy life outside of work. 🌟
• Private Healthcare with Bupa - Your Health, Our Priority: Get comprehensive care with Vitality’s private healthcare, where your medical history is disregarded, ensuring peace of mind whenever you need it.
• Chip Fitness Benefits - Your Wellbeing, Your Way: Support your fitness and mental wellbeing with access to classes, programs, and personal goals. We’ve got you covered!
• Employee Assistance Programme - We’ve Got Your Back: Access confidential support for personal or work challenges, including mental health resources and practical advice. We’ve got your back!
• Hybrid Working - Flexibility at Its Best: Work in the office 3 times a week, blending in-person collaboration with the comfort of home.
• Investing in Your Growth: We support your development with an annual training budget for courses, workshops, or conferences to help you advance your career.
• Pension: We invest in your future with a workplace pension scheme, contributing 5% on earnings up to £50,000. Plan ahead with confidence while you grow your career!
• Company Laptop - Work Anytime, Anywhere: Get a company laptop to stay productive on the go, wherever you are!
• Working Away Policy: Work from anywhere outside the UK for up to 90 days – take your job on the go!
• Cycle to Work Scheme - Ride in Style: Enjoy the Cycle to Work Scheme and pedal your way to a healthier, greener commute.
• Season Ticket Loan- Mentoring: You’ve supported and grown less experienced engineers before, and enjoy doing it
• Architecture ownership: You design systems, not just implement them — you can reason through trade-offs and defend a decision
• Python/PySpark/SQL: You write clean, efficient code across all three, and you understand how it performs at scale
• Git: You’re fluent in Git workflows — branching, troubleshooting, code reviews
• Data modelling: You’re comfortable designing schemas and data models, including medallion architecture and Kimball/Star Schema concepts (Fact and Dimension tables), from the ground up
• Database management: Experience with SQL/NoSQL databases (e.g., Redshift, Postgres, MongoDB), with a solid grounding in database fundamentals — indexing, performance, design trade-offs
• Databricks expertise: Deep, hands-on knowledge of the Databricks platform end to end — workspace and compute configuration, governance, orchestration, user management, engineering best practices
• Terraform: You have experience in managing infrastructure as code with Terraform
• Data engineering: You’ve built and scaled complex data products in a growing environment — you’ve seen platforms mature past their early ad hoc stage and know what that evolution actually takes
• Data governance: You understand PII handling and governance patterns, and build them into your designs by default
• Previous experience in fintech
• Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional (or equivalent)
• Proficiency in building streaming data processing systems
• Experience building and training AI/ML models
• Experience re-architecting a data platform from the ground up
• Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud services (AWS, GCP)
• We’re looking for someone who’s genuinely excited about Chip and energised by the opportunity to help build the future of wealth, making saving, investing and pensions simpler and more accessible for everyone
• We work in a regulated space, so the bar is high. But we’ve built a team of smart, thoughtful people who care about doing great work and enjoy doing it together. Technical skills matter, obviously. But they’re not the only thing we hire for
• So alongside the technical side, we’ll be looking for empathy, self-awareness, sound judgement, resilience and a collaborative mindset. People who are good to work with, especially when things get hard
• We want real people. People with interests, perspective and personality. The best teams are made up of individuals who bring different experiences into the room, not just polished CVs and good interview answers- We usually respond within three days
• Video screen with someone from our Talent team
• Video interview with the hiring manager
• Final interview with VP of Engineering