Principal Data Engineer (we have office locations in Cambridge, Leeds and London) London

About the role

We’re looking for an experienced Principal Data Engineer with a proven track record of senior technical leadership across Genomics England’s data engineering capability. This is a senior individual contributor role operating at Principal level, where you will set technical direction and influence data engineering strategy across complex, regulated, national scale clinical and research platforms. You will shape how we design, build and operate scalable, secure and highly reliable data platforms. This includes defining standards, patterns and data engineering approaches that multiple teams will align to and deliver against. This is a hands‑on leadership role. You will stay close to data engineering, code and delivery while also operating at architectural and strategic level to guide direction, influence technical decisions, raise data engineering maturity, and build capability across the organisation.

Working across data engineering, data architecture, product and governance, you will ensure our data platforms are robust, interoperable and aligned to organisational and national priorities, including highly sensitive clinical and research data.

Responsibilities

• Setting technical direction and influencing data engineering standards across data platforms, pipelines and data products used by multiple teams.
• Leading the design and delivery of complex, large‑scale data solutions across cloud and hybrid environments.
• Influencing architectural direction for enterprise data platforms, including Lakehouse, distributed and event‑driven systems.
• Acting as a technical authority across squads, ensuring alignment to data engineering standards and data architectural principles.
• Working closely with senior engineers, architects, bioinformaticians, data colleagues and product teams to influence delivery and technical decision‑making.
• Ensuring all data engineering approaches meet strict governance, privacy, security and regulatory requirements.
• Driving adoption and influencing use of modern engineering practices including DataOps, DevOps, CI/CD, infrastructure‑as‑code, automation and observability.
• Improving platform resilience, performance and operational maturity across critical data systems.
• Evaluating and influencing adoption of new tools, technologies and data engineering approaches where appropriate.
• Mentoring experienced data engineers and influencing capability uplift across teams.
• Contributing to organisation‑wide technical communities, standards and design governance.

Requirements

• Proven experience operating at senior or Principal level in data engineering.
• Strong track record of designing and successfully delivering enterprise‑scale data platforms and systems.
• Deep experience with modern data architecture, cloud infrastructure and scalable data processing systems.
• Strong hands‑on programming experience, i.e. Python and SQL.
• Strong expertise in data modelling, data lifecycle management, metadata and governance.
• Experience working in complex regulated environments such as healthcare, genomics or research.
• Strong understanding of security by design and handling highly sensitive data.
• Proven ability to influence architectural and data engineering direction across multiple teams or domains.
• Strong stakeholder engagement skills, with experience influencing senior technical and non‑technical stakeholders in matrix environments.
• Experience with genomics, bioinformatics or clinical data platforms.
• Familiarity with GA4GH, OMOP or FHIR standards.
• Experience with orchestration tools such as Airflow, Prefect or AWS Glue.
• Experience with modern data architecture patterns such as data mesh or Lakehouse approaches.

Benefits

• Generous leave: 30 days’ holiday plus bank holidays, additional leave for long service and up to 30 days of remote working abroad annually (approval required).
• Family‑friendly arrangements: blended working, flexible working, enhanced maternity, paternity and shared parental leave.
• Pension and financial: defined contribution pension (double bonus up to 10%), life assurance (3x salary) and Give‑As‑You‑Earn schema.
• Learning and development: individual learning budgets, support for training and certifications, reimbursement for one annual professional subscription (approval required).
• Recognition and rewards: employee recognition programme and referral scheme.
• Health & wellbeing: subsidised gym membership, a free Headspace account, employee assistance programme, eye tests and flu jabs.

Salary and Closing Date

Salary From: £103,400 pa

Closing Date: Tuesday 12th May @ 23:00 (UK time)

Equal Opportunity

Genomics England is actively committed to providing and supporting an inclusive environment that promotes equity, diversity and inclusion best practice both within our community and in any other area where we have influence. We are proud of our diverse community where everyone can come to work and feel welcomed and treated with respect regardless of any disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, or social background. Genomics England’s policies of non‑discrimination and equity will be applied fairly to all people, regardless of age, disability, gender identity or reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, being pregnant or recently becoming a parent, race, religion or beliefs, sex or sexual orientation, length of service, whether full or part‑time or employed under a permanent or a fixed‑term contract or any other relevant factor. Genomics England does not tolerate any form of discrimination, harassment, victimisation or bullying at work. Such behaviour undermines our mission and core values and diminishes the dignity, respect and integrity of all parties. Our People policies outline our commitment to inclusivity. We aim to remove barriers in our recruitment processes and to be flexible with our interview processes. Should you require any adjustments that may help you to fully participate in the recruitment process, we encourage you to discuss this with us.