Database Engineer in Wolverhampton

Build the Data Foundation That Drives Our Business. Data is the lifeblood of our organisation. Our analysts, strategists, and leadership teams rely on fast, reliable, and well-architected data infrastructure to make the decisions that shape our future. As a Database Engineer with 4+ years of hands‑on experience, you'll be the person who makes that possible. This is a senior individual contributor role with real ownership. You'll design and maintain the systems our entire business depends on — from high-performance transactional databases through to the data pipelines that feed our analytics platform. You'll work closely with data scientists, analysts, and engineers to ensure data flows cleanly, securely, and at scale.

About us: Lloyd James Media Group comprises several inter‑related businesses operating in a number of sectors including Legal, IT, Media, Property, and Travel. We are an innovative and award-winning company that recognises our people are crucial to our ongoing success. We thrive in a fast‑paced, commercially driven environment where data informs our direction. We have been around for over two decades, and we are expanding our business interests here in the UK and growing our customer base further in the EU. It’s an exciting time to join our friendly, professional, and welcoming team of people.

The Role: You'll take ownership of our database estate — designing, building, optimising, and safeguarding the infrastructure that underpins our data‑driven culture. No two days look the same: one day you might be tuning a slow‑running query that's impacting a critical business report; the next, you're architecting a new data model to support a strategic product launch. A critical requirement is to have expert‑level experience with MongoDB.

Your key responsibilities:

• Develop and optimise complex queries, stored procedures, views, and indexing strategies to maximise performance at scale.
• Architect and manage data pipelines and ETL/ELT workflows that reliably move and transform data across our ecosystem.
• Monitor database health, capacity, and performance — proactively identifying and resolving bottlenecks before they become problems.
• Lead database schema design and data modelling in collaboration with analysts, data scientists, and software engineers.
• Enforce and evolve database security standards, including access control, encryption, and compliance with UK data regulations (including GDPR/UK GDPR).
• Develop and maintain robust backup, recovery, and disaster recovery strategies to ensure business continuity.
• Support and mentor junior engineers, conducting code reviews and sharing best practices across the team.
• Evaluate and implement new database technologies and cloud‑native solutions aligned with our evolving data strategy.
• Collaborate with the wider engineering and analytics teams to ensure our data infrastructure scales with business growth.

What We're Looking For: You're an experienced engineer who takes pride in building systems that are robust, performant, and maintainable. You think carefully about design decisions, communicate well with both technical and non‑technical stakeholders, and bring a solutions‑oriented mindset to every challenge.

Essential requirements:

• 4+ years of hands‑on experience in a Database Engineer, Data Engineer, or similar role.
• Expert‑level with MongoDB — writing, optimising, and debugging complex queries across large datasets.
• Strong experience with at least one major RDBMS — PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, AWS, or Oracle.
• Solid understanding of data modelling principles — normalisation, dimensional modelling (star/snowflake schemas), and entity‑relationship design.
• Proven experience designing and managing ETL/ELT pipelines using tools such as dbt, Apache Airflow, SSIS, or similar.
• Experience with performance tuning — query optimisation, indexing strategies, execution plan analysis, and partitioning.
• Working knowledge of cloud data platforms — AWS (RDS, Redshift, Glue), Azure (SQL DB, Synapse), or GCP (BigQuery, Cloud SQL).
• Familiarity with version control (Git) and experience working in agile/DevOps environments.
• Understanding of database security, RBAC, encryption at rest/in transit, and UK data compliance requirements.
• Strong communication skills — able to present technical concepts clearly to non‑technical stakeholders.

Desirable experience:

• Experience with NoSQL databases — MongoDB, Cassandra, DynamoDB, or Redis.
• Knowledge of real‑time data streaming technologies such as Apache Kafka or AWS Kinesis.
• Exposure to data lakehouse architectures and platforms such as Databricks or Apache Iceberg.
• Scripting/automation skills in Python or Bash for database administration and pipeline tasks.
• Experience with infrastructure‑as‑code tools (Terraform, Ansible) for database provisioning.
• Familiarity with BI tooling (Power BI, Tableau, Looker) and how data engineering supports analytics delivery.

Our Technology Stack: PostgreSQL, SQL Server, dbt, Apache Airflow, AWS Redshift, Azure Synapse, Python, Apache Kafka, Terraform, Git/GitHub, Power BI, Databricks.

What You'll Own: We believe in clear ownership. From day one, you'll have defined areas of responsibility — and the autonomy to make technical decisions within them. Over time, you'll expand your remit as trust is built and your impact grows.

Area of Ownership:

• Database Architecture: Schemas, models, and environments that are clean, documented, and built to scale.
• Performance & Reliability: Query times that meet SLAs; proactive monitoring with zero unplanned downtime.
• Data Pipelines: ELT/ETL workflows that are observable, testable, and self‑healing where possible.
• Security & Compliance: Access controls, audit trails, and GDPR‑compliant data handling throughout.
• Engineering Standards: Documentation, naming conventions, and code quality that the whole team can follow.

What We Offer: Competitive salary benchmarked to market — reviewed annually. Hybrid working: typically 2–3 days in the office, remainder remote. 20 days annual leave plus UK bank holidays. Employer pension contribution. Access to the latest cloud and data tooling — we invest in the right infrastructure. Flat engineering culture: your technical opinions will be heard and acted upon. Genuine progression pathways — into senior engineering, architecture, or engineering leadership.

The Environment You'll Work In: We're a data‑driven business in every sense. Our leadership team actively uses data to shape strategy, challenge assumptions, and allocate resources. That means database engineering here isn't a support function — it's a strategic capability. Your work will be visible, valued, and directly connected to business outcomes. You'll join a team of skilled engineers who care deeply about craft, are collaborative by default, and aren't afraid to debate the right approach. We hold regular knowledge‑sharing sessions, support open‑source contributions, and give people the space to experiment and learn.