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

Genomics England is a global leader in enabling genomic medicine and research, focused on creating a world where everyone benefits from genomic healthcare. Building on the 100,000 Genomes Project, we support the NHS’s world-first national whole genome sequencing service and run the growing National Genomic Research Library, alongside delivering numerous major genomics initiatives. By connecting research and clinical care at national scale, we enable immediate healthcare benefits and advances for the future.

Our mission is to provide the evidence and digital systems so that by 2035 genomics could play a role in up to half of all healthcare interactions, whilst securing the UK’s position as the best place to discover, prove and benefit from genomic innovations. We are accelerating our impact and working with patients, doctors, scientists, government and industry to improve genomic testing, and help researchers access the health data and technology they need to make new medical discoveries and create more effective, targeted medicines for everybody.

Behind the Healthcare and Research outcomes, Genomics England delivers through designing, developing and operating complex healthcare software systems. We're on the cusp of big changes with the real prospect of genomics becoming the fabric of everyday healthcare through the lifetime - from birth to old age.

At Genomics England, we're seeking an experienced Principal Data Engineer with a proven track record of senior technical leadership across highly complex data engineering environments. 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 where it matters, while also operating at both 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. This Principal level opportunity is aimed at experienced, hands‑on data engineering leaders, not analytics, reporting or data analysis professionals.

What you will be doing

• 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, influencing 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

What we are looking for

• 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

This is a rare opportunity to define how data engineering operates at national scale in a regulated, mission driven organisation. As an experienced Principal Data Engineer with a strong and demonstrable track record, you will help set direction, shape standards others build to, and directly influence the maturity and reliability of critical data platforms, while staying close enough to the engineering to make a real hands‑on impact!

Degree in Computer Science, IT or equivalent practical industry experience. Architecture or data related certifications are beneficial, TOGAF especially valued.

Salary From: £103,400 pa

Closing Date: Monday 3rd August @ 23:00 (UK time)

Being an integral part of such a meaningful mission is extremely rewarding in itself, but in order to support our people, we’re continually improving our benefits package. We pride ourselves on investing in our people and supporting them to achieve their career goals, as well as offering a benefits package including:

• Generous Leave: 30 days’ holiday plus bank holidays, plus additional leave for long service, and also the option to apply for up to 30 days of remote working abroad annually (approval required).
• Family-Friendly: Blended working arrangements, flexible working, enhanced maternity, paternity and shared parental leave benefits.
• Pension & Financial: Defined contribution pension (Genomics England double‑matches up to 10%, however you can contribute more if you wish), Life Assurance (3x salary), and a Give As You Earn scheme.
• Learning & Development: Individual learning budgets, support for training and certifications, and reimbursement for one annual professional subscription (approval required).
• Recognition & Rewards: Employee recognition programme and referral scheme.
• Health & Wellbeing: Subsidised gym membership, a free Headspace account, and access to an Employee Assistance Programme, eye tests, flu jabs.

Equal opportunities and our commitment to a diverse and inclusive workplace

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 and 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.

Culture

We have four key behaviours that represent what we would like Genomics England to feel like and the culture we want to encourage, in order for us to achieve our mission. These behaviours help us all work well together, deliver on our outcomes, celebrate our successes and share feedback with each other.

Blended working model

Genomics England operates a blended working model as we know our people appreciate the flexibility that hybrid working can bring. We expect most people to come into the office a minimum of 2 times each month. However, this will vary according to role and will be agreed with your team leader. There is no expectation that people will return to the office full time unless they want to, however, some of our roles require full time on site attendance e.g., lab teams, reception team.

Our teams and squads have, and will continue to reflect on what works best for them to work together successfully and have the freedom to design working patterns to suit, beyond the minimum. Our office locations are: Canary Wharf, Cambridge and Leeds.

Onboarding background checks

As part of our recruitment process, all successful candidates are subject to a Standard Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. We therefore require applicants to disclose any previous offences at point of application, as some unspent convictions may mean we are unable to proceed with your application due to the nature of our work in healthcare.