At a Glance
- Tasks: Build and manage data ingestion layers and oversee data reliability.
- Company: Join Ryft, a fast-growing FCA-authorised payments institution.
- Benefits: Enjoy competitive salary, hybrid work, and direct exposure to leadership.
- Other info: Opportunity for career growth in a dynamic, innovative environment.
- Why this job: Make a real impact in fintech with cutting-edge data technology.
- Qualifications: Experience in AWS, Python, SQL, and production data platforms required.
The predicted salary is between 59400 - 72600 £ per year.
Ryft is an FCA authorised payment institution providing marketplace and platform payments infrastructure to merchants across the UK and EU. As Ryft scales through its next phase of growth, including EU expansion, we're investing in the data platform that underpins it.
We're hiring a Senior Data Engineer to own everything that happens to our data after it is written. The boundary with Software Engineering is drawn in one line: they own everything up to the write, you own everything after it — capture, ingestion, the bronze layer, and the data services that run on top. You'll build the change data capture and event-driven ingestion platform that gets data out of our source systems reliably, and hand a clean, contracted bronze layer to the analytics team. This is a senior individual contributor role, hands‑on every day, working alongside the Data Lead and the Analytics Lead. Year one is build-heavy: CDC and event ingestion into S3 and delivering our warehouse migration end to end. Our current stack is AWS, RDS Postgres, Dagster, dbt, and Superset. This is a hybrid role based in central Manchester, with 2 days per week in the office.
What you’ll do:
- Build the ingestion layer: Capture change streams off our transactional stores into S3, alongside the domain events our services emit, so the warehouse reflects both current state and what happened to get there.
- Own the bronze layer: Land data reliably at a known latency, with schema evolution handled deliberately rather than survived. Replay and backfill should be routine operations.
- Hold the contract at the boundary: Agree with Software Engineering what crosses the write, in what shape, with what notice when it changes — then enforce it on your side, so a schema change is a handled event rather than an outage.
- Deliver the warehouse migration: Moving off Postgres is a priority for the next twelve months. You'll own it end to end, from evaluation through to cutover, and your view on the target platform carries real weight.
- Run what you build: Deployments, behaviour in production, observability, runtime cost, and reliability. We're expanding into the EU, so regional data residency is a design constraint from the start rather than a retrofit.
What we’re looking for:
- Several years building and running production data platforms, comfortable being the most senior engineer on the platform day to day.
- Real AWS depth in production, across S3, IAM, networking, and the ingestion and messaging services (Kinesis / Firehose, EventBridge, SNS, SQS, Lambda or equivalent).
- Hands‑on change data capture and event-driven ingestion — you understand delivery guarantees, idempotency, ordering, duplicates, and replay, and what each costs to get right.
- Strong production Python and SQL, a cloud warehouse (Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery or similar), and an orchestrator (Dagster, Airflow or equivalent).
- You've run what you built, been called when it broke, and changed something structural afterwards — Git, pull requests, CI/CD and testing are defaults, not aspirations.
- Comfortable working inside an infrastructure estate you don't own, and able to negotiate what you need from teams whose backlogs you don't control.
- Pragmatic — you ship working things and know when a simple solution now beats an elegant one later.
Nice to have:
- Payments or fintech experience, particularly transaction, ledger, or reconciliation data.
- Change data capture out of DynamoDB or a similar store.
- A warehouse or platform migration behind you.
- dbt familiarity, so you know how your outputs get consumed.
- Multi-account AWS, data residency work, data contracts or schema registries.
What you’ll get:
- Near-greenfield platform ownership at an FCA-regulated payments business, with the ownership boundaries drawn and agreed — you'll spend your time building, not arguing about whose job something is.
- Direct exposure to senior leadership, with real influence over the target architecture.
- A seat at a fast-growing, well-funded fintech scaling in a genuinely underserved part of the payments market.
Senior Data Engineer in Manchester employer: Ryft
At Ryft, we pride ourselves on being a dynamic fintech start-up that fosters a culture of innovation and collaboration. As a Fraud & Risk Manager, you'll not only lead critical fraud strategies but also have the opportunity to shape a growing team in a fast-paced environment where your contributions directly impact our success. With a commitment to employee development and a supportive work culture, Ryft offers a unique chance to thrive in the heart of the payments industry while enjoying the benefits of a flexible and engaging workplace.
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We think this is how you could land Senior Data Engineer in Manchester
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We think you need these skills to ace Senior Data Engineer in Manchester
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show Off Your Projects:In the world of data science, your projects can speak volumes about your skills. Make sure to showcase a few key projects in your CV or portfolio, especially those that highlight your ability to work with data sets, build models, or use relevant tools like Python, R, or SQL. Don’t forget to include links to any GitHub repositories if applicable!
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Stand Out with Relevant Courses and Certifications:Although experience talks, relevant courses or certifications can be your ticket to impressing hiring managers at Ryft. Mention any standout courses you've completed that equipped you with essential skills, such as machine learning certifications or data visualisation courses. This shows your commitment to continuously developing your skills in the field!
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