Head of Data Engineering

JD Sports is a leading omni-channel retailer of Sports Fashion, Outdoors and Gyms with colleagues working in stores across several retail fascias in many markets around the world. We want to be the leading global omnichannel retailer in the sports and outdoor industry. To achieve this, we are seeking a visionary, delivery-focused Head of Data Engineering to lead the transformation of JD’s enterprise data engineering capabilities.

This role is based out of our Bury office with the expectation that the successful candidate will be in the office 4 days a week leading a Data Engineering function of 15+ within the wider Data & AI organisation. Your remit spans cloud platform engineering, pipeline automation, real-time data processing, curation, and the enablement of business intelligence, data science and AI teams.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the long-term data engineering strategy and roadmap driving modernisation, standardisation, and cloud-first best practices.
• Lead the migration away from legacy data systems into modern, scalable cloud platforms.
• Identify new technologies, patterns, and methodologies that advance our capabilities.
• Champion engineering excellence, governance, data quality, and enterprise-grade reliability across all teams and pipelines.
• Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing team of data engineering professionals.
• Establish clear role pathways, skills development plans, and a culture of continuous improvement.
• Drive strong engineering culture, collaboration, and accountability across the team.
• Manage team capacity, resourcing, and prioritisation to meet business demand effectively.
• Oversee the design, build, and optimisation of cloud-based data pipelines, datasets, and infrastructure supporting analytics, reporting, and AI products.
• Ensure data engineering teams deliver reliable and efficient pipelines for ingestion, transformation, enrichment, and curation of large-scale data.
• Establish and enforce engineering standards across CI/CD, version control, data modelling, documentation, observability, and code quality.
• Build trusted relationships with senior business leaders, acting as a strategic partner.
• Partner closely with Data Science, BI, Product, Cloud Infrastructure, Security, and Architecture teams.
• Ensure data platforms meet regulatory, security, and compliance requirements.
• Define and maintain data engineering standards, documentation, and policies.
• Deliver a scalable, modern, and cost-efficient enterprise data platform.
• Reduce cloud spend and cost to serve through optimisation and engineering standards.
• Improve the reliability, performance, and availability of mission-critical data pipelines.
• Increase data quality, consistency, and usability across priority domains.
• Strengthen engineering capability and maturity through talent development.
• Ensure on-time delivery of strategic data initiatives in support of analytics, AI, and digital transformation goals.

Skills and Experience

• Significant senior-level experience in Data Engineering leadership roles.
• At least five years’ experience managing and developing high-performing Data Engineering teams.
• Deep expertise in cloud data engineering within GCP, pipelines, orchestration, and distributed data processing.
• Strong background in SQL, Python, CI/CD, and software engineering best practices.
• Experience designing and scaling data platforms, data models, and ingestion frameworks.
• Understanding of ML/AI enablement, data curation strategies, and metadata/lineage tooling.
• Proven ability to drive organisational change and modernise technology stacks.
• Effective communicator who can influence and engage senior stakeholders.
• Experience in large-scale, multi-brand, or global enterprises; retail experience is advantageous.
• Strong leadership and people development skills.

Benefits

We offer staff discounts on JD Group and other brands within the organisation, and personal development opportunities to learn and develop at work.