Data Platform Lead in Manchester

Manchester | Hybrid working with occasional travel between offices. £80,000–£90,000 + bonus, benefits and potential management incentive participation. Permanent.

We are partnering with a fast-growing, private equity-backed professional services group to recruit its first dedicated senior data hire. The business is investing significantly in technology and sees data as fundamental to its next phase of growth. It now needs a Data Platform Lead who can build the core platform from the ground up while helping senior leaders define how data should be used across the organisation.

This is not a purely strategic leadership position or a narrow engineering role. It requires someone who can design the architecture, write code, build pipelines and deliver reporting—while also working credibly with executives to shape priorities and influence decisions.

The opportunity

Reporting directly to the CTO, you will take end-to-end ownership of the organisation’s developing data capability. For at least the first six to nine months, this will be a standalone position. You will therefore need to be highly hands-on, pragmatic and comfortable creating structure in a low-maturity environment. As the capability grows, you will help define the team, standards and operating model around it.

You will:

• Design and build a scalable data platform using the Microsoft ecosystem.
• Develop ingestion, transformation and orchestration pipelines.
• Integrate data from finance, CRM and other operational platforms.
• Define the target architecture across lakehouse or warehouse storage, transformation and semantic layers.
• Create robust dimensional and semantic data models.
• Deliver high-quality Power BI dashboards for board, financial, operational and divisional reporting.
• Standardise KPIs, measures and data definitions across the group.
• Move the organisation from fragmented reporting towards a trusted single source of truth.
• Partner with the CTO to create a pragmatic, phased data strategy and delivery roadmap.
• Translate senior stakeholder requirements into practical data products and solutions.
• Establish proportionate governance covering data quality, security, access and GDPR.
• Structure the data estate to enable future automation, AI and predictive analytics.
• Lay the foundations for a future data team, including its standards, structure and ways of working.

About you

You may currently be working as a Senior Data Engineer, Data Platform Engineer, Data Architect or Data Lead. Your title is less important than your ability to demonstrate that you have personally built and delivered modern data platforms.

You will need:

• Experience building a data platform from scratch or working in a genuinely greenfield, low-maturity environment.
• Advanced SQL skills.
• Strong hands-on Python experience covering pipelines, transformation or automation.
• Deep knowledge of ETL/ELT design and orchestration.
• Experience with Microsoft Fabric and/or Azure data services.
• Experience with Azure Databricks or a comparable platform.
• Strong Power BI capability, including modelling, performance and governance.
• Experience integrating data from multiple business systems.
• The ability to balance immediate reporting needs with sound long-term architecture.
• Strong communication and stakeholder-management skills, including experience working with senior business leaders.
• The confidence to challenge assumptions, shape priorities and turn loosely defined requirements into deliverable solutions.
• Experience within professional services, a multi-entity group or another regulated environment would be particularly valuable. Exposure to Purview, third-party technology partners, automation, AI/ML or advanced analytics would also be advantageous.

Why consider this opportunity?

Few roles offer this combination of technical ownership, strategic access and greenfield scope. You will become the organisation’s senior data authority, work closely with the CTO and have the freedom to build a capability that will directly support reporting, automation, AI and future growth.

Package

• Annual bonus of up to 10%, based on individual and company performance.
• Potential participation in the company’s management incentive plan, subject to final terms and allocation.
• 25 days’ holiday, with the option to purchase five additional days.
• Birthday off.
• Enhanced parental pay.
• Health cash plan.
• Company sick pay.