Senior Data Engineer

About Us

Now part of WGSN, the world’s leading trends forecaster, IWSR is the most trusted, accurate, and widely used source for beverage alcohol trends globally. We help our clients understand the beverage alcohol landscape, benchmark performance, identify market entry opportunities, and stay ahead of innovation in a rapidly evolving industry. We are the only research company to visit and speak directly with key industry stakeholders – including producers, distributors, retailers, and duty‑free operators – in more than 160 countries each year. IWSR is a friendly and informal, yet highly professional and fast‑growing company, offering an exciting opportunity to contribute to the next phase of growth for a highly respected global business. This is a hybrid role based in central London, with the expectation to be more in the office than not.

Key Responsibilities

• You’ll be joining a small, collaborative data engineering team and taking on real ownership of production‑critical systems from day one.
• This is a hands‑on role with broad scope — you’ll be working across established pipelines, active migration projects, and core database infrastructure.
• Maintaining and enhancing the data ingestion pipeline that feeds our Global Database — a production codebase you’ll own and improve over time.
• Completing and productionising the ongoing migration of US Navigator from Excel‑based processes to Python.
• Collaborating with our Databricks Data Engineer on migration work for GTR and data pooling workloads.
• Taking ownership of our SQL Server environment, including security, structural improvements, and day‑to‑day database management.
• Contributing to a team that works closely with non‑technical stakeholders, translating data engineering work into business outcomes.

Role Scope & Progression

This role sits at the centre of an important moment for data engineering at IWSR. As a data business, rigorous data practices are fundamental to what we do — but data engineering as a discipline has historically been under‑matured relative to that ambition. This hire is a key part of changing that.

Beyond the day‑to‑day ownership of production systems, you’ll be contributing to a broader maturity journey across the business:

• Working with stakeholders and data analysts to understand existing data pipelines and, where appropriate, migrate or rebuild them to meet new standards.
• Helping to define and embed those standards — contributing to best practices for how data engineering work is done across the organisation.
• Taking ownership of ad hoc SQL Server processes and transforming them into well‑documented, standardised, resilient workflows that don’t rely on individual knowledge.
• Collaborating with our existing Databricks Data Engineer on migration work, contributing to and learning from that process as our platform evolves.

This is a small, focused team — one other data engineer, working under an engineering lead who also oversees software engineering. There isn’t a defined progression ladder, and we’d rather be upfront about that than overpromise. What we can offer is genuine ownership and influence: the opportunity to shape how data engineering is practised at a data‑first business, and to leave a clear mark on something that matters to the organisation. For the right person — someone who finds satisfaction in improving what exists, setting standards, and being trusted to own problems — this is a compelling place to do that work.

Required Skills & Experience

• 5–7 years of experience in data engineering or a closely related role.
• Strong Python skills with a data engineering focus — pipelines, data transformation, and production‑quality code.
• Solid SQL Server experience, including querying and database management; comfortable owning a production instance without full DBA support.
• Hands‑on Databricks and PySpark experience.
• Familiarity with AWS and infrastructure‑as‑code tooling.
• Experience working in small teams without dedicated platform or infrastructure support.
• A track record of working across multiple technologies and problem domains, with evidence of end‑to‑end ownership.
• Comfortable inheriting and improving legacy systems rather than always building from scratch.
• Experience with AI‑assisted development tooling (Claude Code, Copilot, Cursor, or similar) is a positive.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and automated testing practices is a plus.

Benefits

• Annual Leave - 25 days per year with the option to buy or sell five extra days.
• Hybrid/Flexible Working - We encourage a flexible and agile working environment with 3 days/week in‑office policy.
• Remote Working Leaves - We offer a 3‑week work‑from‑anywhere policy.
• Employee Assistance Programme - We provide access to a 24‑hour, free and confidential advice line that can provide mental health, financial and wellbeing support. This is in addition to our in‑house certified Mental Health First Aiders.
• Pension - We offer up to 5% matched pension, with our pension plan defaulting to sustainable options.
• Life Assurance - We provide life assurance up to 4x basic salary, subject to eligibility and insurer’s underwriting.
• Health & Wellbeing - We provide Private Medical Insurance through Vitality.
• Charitable Volunteering - Plus take advantage.