UST is seeking an accomplished Lead Data Engineer to join our Data Team in Leeds. This senior, hands‑on leadership role is responsible for shaping data engineering capability across multiple delivery squads. You will combine deep technical expertise with visible leadership, driving engineering excellence, mentoring talent, and delivering high‑quality data products that directly support business and strategic outcomes.
This role sits at the intersection of engineering, architecture, and product, requiring close collaboration with Product Managers, Data Architects, Analysts, and Visualisation Engineers. You will also play an active role in championing best practices across our Agile and engineering communities.
The Role
* Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and career guidance to data engineers, raising engineering standards while enabling individual and team growth.
* Champion a DevOps‑led culture built on ownership, accountability, and operational excellence “you build it, you run it, you own it.”
* Set and uphold best practices in data engineering, including design, development, code reviews, testing, and release management.
* Actively contribute to Lead Engineer and Agile communities of practice, driving continuous improvement across teams.
* Design and deliver robust data pipelines handling structured and semi‑structured data, across batch and real‑time processing scenarios.
* Ensure all engineering solutions align with enterprise data architecture principles and standards defined by Data Architects.
* Partner closely with Product Managers and Data Analysts to translate business requirements into scalable, performant, and secure data solutions.
* Evaluate, influence, and adopt new technologies and tooling to strengthen data engineering capability.
* Balance hands‑on engineering delivery with strategic technical leadership to ensure consistent, high‑quality outcomes.
About You
You are a senior data engineer with a strong leadership mindset and a track record of delivering at scale. You bring both technical depth and collaborative influence, and you are comfortable operating in complex, production‑critical environments.
Experience & Expertise
* Proven experience designing, building, and operating secure, high‑quality data platforms in production.
* Strong background delivering scalable, high‑performance data solutions with a focus on reliability and resilience.
* Demonstrated experience mentoring and leading data engineers in Agile environments.
* Solid understanding of modern data architectures, including data lakes, data warehouses, and data vaults.
* Hands‑on experience with Microsoft Azure, including services such as:
o Azure Databricks
o Azure Data Factory
o Advanced skills in Python, SQL, and ideally PySpark.
* Strong software engineering discipline, including version control and collaborative workflows using GitHub.
* Experience working within Agile frameworks such as Scrum, Kanban, or Lean.
* Excellent communication skills, with the ability to convey complex technical concepts clearly to non‑technical stakeholders.
Core Skills & Technologies
* Azure Data Factory
* Databricks
* Data integration & data flow design
* Azure‑based data platforms
* Python, SQL, PySpark
* Agile delivery models
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