Lead Engineer/Data Engineer in London

120,000 - 180,000London AreaLead Data EngineerWant to own the data architecture behind an AI product while the foundations are still being built? This is an early-stage lead role where you'll shape the systems powering real-time data, AI workflows, vector search and analytics — with the freedom to make the key technical decisions. Own the data architecture and technical directionBuild the data backbone of an AI-first product from the ground upWork closely with AI, backend and product engineersSolve problems across streaming, vector search and ML data infrastructureHelp define tooling, standards and the future data teamCompetitive salary + equityJoin early enough to have genuine influence over how things are builtWhat you'll be doingArchitecting scalable batch and real-time data pipelinesDesigning ingestion, transformation and storage systemsBuilding infrastructure for vector search, retrieval and ML workflowsImproving data quality, observability and reliabilityOptimising large-scale datasets and query performanceSupporting AI training, inference and product featuresMaking long-term architecture and tooling decisionsHelping grow and mentor the data engineering functionWhat you'll bringStrong experience in data engineering or backend engineeringExperience designing scalable pipelines and distributed data systemsStrong Python skillsExperience with relational and NoSQL databasesHands-on experience with vector databasesGood understanding of data modelling, performance and storage architectureExperience with technologies such as Spark, Airflow, Kafka or Elasticsearch/OpenSearchExperience with AI/ML platforms, cloud infrastructure or event-driven architectures would be useful, but you don't need everything on the list.