Lead Data Products Engineer

Lead Data Products Engineer – Shape, Build and Lead Trusted Data Products

Are you a senior data engineer who’s passionate about building high‑quality data products and developing others? As a Lead Data Products Engineer at Peabody, you’ll take technical ownership of our data engineering capability, designing and delivering trusted, reusable data products that power decision‑making across the organisation. As the most senior engineer in the team, you’ll set technical direction, embed engineering standards and help mature our data platform in line with Peabody’s data strategy.

This is a high‑impact leadership role where your technical expertise, mentorship and collaboration will shape both our data products and our people. You’ll work closely with product owners, platform engineers and business stakeholders to deliver scalable, governed and high‑performance data solutions.

What you’ll do

• Lead the design and delivery of robust, scalable data pipelines and transformations using Azure Data Platform tools including Databricks, Data Factory and Data Lake Gen2
• Own and shape curated data layers (bronze, silver, gold), ensuring they are optimised for analytics, reporting and AI/ML use cases
• Define and enforce engineering best practice, including data quality checks, monitoring, alerting, lineage and traceability
• Set standards for technical documentation such as data dictionaries, architectural diagrams, testing and service‑level expectations
• Champion DevOps and CI/CD practices using Git, Azure DevOps, infrastructure‑as‑code and automated testing
• Line manage, mentor and develop Data Products Engineers, including junior engineers and apprentices
• Build internal capability through structured mentoring, peer reviews, pairing and code clinics
• Translate business needs into clearly defined data products, metrics and transformation logic using BEAM‑informed discovery approaches
• Contribute to data product portfolio prioritisation with the Head of Data Products and product owners
• Ensure all engineering work aligns with data governance, security, privacy and metadata standards

What you’ll need

• Extensive experience as a data engineer on modern data platforms, with deep expertise in Microsoft Azure
• Expert‑level Python and SQL skills, with experience delivering large‑scale data transformations and models
• Strong experience with Databricks (PySpark), Azure Data Factory and Data Lake Gen2
• Proven experience leading, mentoring or managing engineering teams
• Strong understanding of data product lifecycles, medallion architecture and governance frameworks (e.g. DAMA)
• Experience with DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing and infrastructure‑as‑code
• Excellent communication skills, able to engage confidently with both technical and non‑technical stakeholders
• Strong organisational skills with the ability to balance delivery and people development

Who you are

You will be:

• A collaborative and empathetic technical leader who leads by example
• Passionate about building capability and developing others
• Comfortable working in an organisation at an early stage of data maturity
• Pragmatic, resilient and solutions‑focused
• Curious and proactive about evolving tools, practices and standards
• Committed to delivering high‑quality, trusted data products

Why Join Us?

When you join Peabody, you’re joining a team guided by our values:
Be Kind, Do the Right Thing, Love New Ideas, Celebrate Diversity, Keep Our Promises, and Pull Together.
We’re investing in data as a strategic asset and creating an engineering‑led culture where quality, learning and collaboration matter.

What We Offer

• 30 days annual leave, plus bank holidays
• Two paid volunteering days each year
• Flexible benefits scheme and employee discount portal
• Life assurance at 4x your salary
• Up to 10% pension contribution

Please read before applying

There will be an initial screening call on MS Teams on Wednesday 6th May. If successful, you will be invited to a face to face interview on Wednesday 13th May.

This role combines hands‑on technical leadership with people management and strategic input. You’ll be expected to set engineering standards, mentor others and work collaboratively across data, technology and the wider business to deliver trusted, reusable data products.

If this sounds like the right role for you and you’d love to be part of Peabody, we’d like to hear from you.
Please apply now by submitting an anonymised CV and a short statement explaining why you’re the perfect fit for this role.

We reserve the right to close this advert early should we receive enough application.

We are not requiring agency support on this role.

Got questions? Reach out to George Murphy, Talent Specialist, at george.murphy@peabody.org.uk