Principal Analytics Engineer in London

About DFTO

DFTO is the government’s public sector rail owning group. Its purpose is to bring all currently privately-owned train operators into public ownership in advance of the creation of Great British Railways in 2027 - and deliver improvements in the here and now by unifying and integrating train operations under common public ownership. DFTO has over 30,000 employees, runs over 8,500 services a day and delivers over 640 million customer journeys across its networks every year.

Major improvements are being delivered by DFTO train operators (TOCs) that are already under public ownership - these are LNER, Northern, TransPennine Express (TPE), Southeastern, South Western Railway (SWR), c2c, Greater Anglia and WM Trains. We work closely with the DfT but operate independently with our own governance and leadership teams. Our priority is ensuring efficient, dependable rail services for everyone.

Primary Purpose of Job:

The Principal Analytics Engineer is the technical leadership post within the DFTO Data function, and the data engineering authority across the Common Data Service portfolio. The portfolio is DFTO's cross-industry data capability: ingesting, standardising, and publishing shared data products for use across the GB rail ecosystem, in preparation for the establishment of Great British Railways. The role combines hands-on technical delivery with cross-portfolio data engineering leadership.

Key Responsibilities:

• Cross-portfolio engineering leadership
• Own the overarching technical approach across all active Common Data Service initiatives: set data engineering patterns, make authoritative source placement decisions, and ensure that what is built in one initiative is reusable across the portfolio rather than isolated within it.
• Manage the boundary between product leadership and data engineering leadership at the initiative level, working with initiative leads (data professionals from TOCs, NR, and RDG) in a peer relationship.
• Sequence data engineering activity across concurrent initiatives, managing cross-initiative dependencies and ensuring the central team's capacity is directed toward the work with the highest portfolio-level return.
• Gate the recognition of shared, canonical data engineering artefacts that have reached the standard required to be reused across the portfolio.
• Recognise when a delivery blocker is structural rather than technical and escalate it to the appropriate function for resolution.

Technical standards and convergence

• Define and maintain the data engineering standards that apply across the portfolio.
• Ensure shared artefacts are catalogued, documented, and published to a standard that makes them genuinely discoverable and reusable by the wider community.
• Feed recurring delivery friction back into the appropriate structural channels for escalation and resolution.

Hands-on delivery and technical quality

• Remain a hands-on technical contributor on the most complex or architecturally critical initiatives.
• Provide technical oversight and quality assurance across the team's engineering outputs.
• Support and mentor the Analytics Engineers within the central DFTO Data team.

Community and standards leadership

• Act as the senior technical interface for initiative leads across the portfolio.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership to per-initiative working pods drawn from across the federated community.
• Contribute to shared data standards work across the wider cross-industry community.
• Help the broader community of data professionals understand and apply engineering and data standards in practice.

Knowledge, Skills, Experience & Technical Qualifications:

• Demonstrated experience delivering data products in complex, multi-stakeholder environments.
• Proven ability to exercise technical authority across a hybrid team environment.
• Strong SQL and proficiency in at least one analytics programming language, with Python strongly preferred.
• Deep familiarity with layered data modelling approaches and transformation frameworks.
• Experience designing and maintaining data ingestion and transformation pipelines across cloud-native environments.
• Comfort working across multi-cloud platform environments including AWS and Microsoft Azure/Fabric.
• DataOps disciplines at a leadership level.
• Ability to lead convergence of locally developed data assets toward shared canonical standards.
• Clear written and verbal communication.

Desirable:

• Experience and delivery capability is more important than formal qualifications.
• A degree in a STEM, quantitative, or related field may be beneficial but is not required.
• Experience in a technical lead or principal engineer role within a data product or analytics engineering function.
• Familiarity with data catalogue, metadata management, and data lineage tooling at a portfolio scale.
• Experience working in regulated or safety-adjacent industries where data quality and auditability standards are non-negotiable.

Organisational Context:

The postholder will be the senior technical role within a new central Data function at DFTO, working alongside an Analytics Engineer and under the strategic direction of the Group Head of Data. The wider working community spans data professionals across publicly owned TOCs, NR, and RDG.

Vacancy Details:

• Duration: Permanent
• Location: London Waterloo
• Salary: £90,000 - £104,500
• Closing date: 12th June 2026

DFTO Benefits:

• Annual Leave: Starting at 25 days and rising to an additional day per year of service completed within the first 5 completed years up to a maximum of 5 additional (30 days)
• DC Pension Scheme: 10% Employer contribution, 5% Employee contribution
• Opportunities to learn and network across the wider industry

If you have any questions or reasonable adjustments, please contact Amra.Hurley@dftoperator.co.uk. Please do not email any CV's to us, your application must be made by clicking the 'Apply' button.