Principal Data Engineer

Location: Hybrid role based in Southampton or London, England, with around 20% of Engineering time involving in-person collaboration.

Company

hirify.global is a home improvement retailer operating brands including B&Q, Screwfix, Brico Depot, Castorama and Koctas, with more than 74,000 people.

What you will do

• Define and drive the data platform and data engineering strategy in line with Group Technology objectives.
• Lead architecture decisions and establish scalable standards and design patterns for data pipelines, storage and processing.
• Design and deliver scalable, resilient, observable and cost-efficient data platforms and production pipelines.
• Partner with Architecture and Product teams on long-term platform roadmaps and capabilities.
• Strengthen data quality, governance, security and reusable data products while promoting CI/CD, testing, DevOps, DataOps and platform automation.
• Lead multi-team initiatives, influence senior stakeholders, coach engineers, support hiring and evaluate emerging technologies.

Requirements

• Deep expertise in distributed data processing, cloud-native systems and modern data architecture.
• Proven experience delivering large-scale data platforms and production-grade pipelines.
• Strong Python and SQL skills, with hands-on experience in Spark, PySpark or Scala.
• Experience with dbt for data modelling and transformation.
• Strong knowledge of GCP, Azure or AWS, including services such as Databricks, BigQuery or Azure Data Factory.
• Strong understanding of DevOps and DataOps practices and tools, including CI/CD, Git, Terraform, Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience with data quality tools and testing frameworks such as Great Expectations.
• Deep understanding of batch, streaming and event-driven architecture patterns, including resilient, scalable and observable system design and performance and cost optimisation.
• Track record of setting engineering standards, driving continuous improvement, influencing strategic and investment decisions, working through ambiguity, and coaching engineers.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid working model balancing home working with office and offsite collaboration.
• Inclusive environment focused on experimentation, new ideas, diversity and equal treatment.
• Private healthcare, pension scheme, life assurance and competitive bonus scheme.
• 25 days’ holiday plus bank holidays, staff discounts and share incentive and share-save plans.
• Opportunities for career development, mentoring and participation in a wider Data Engineering community.