Junior Data Engineer in London

Morela is delighted to be supporting a private, family-owned real estate investment group in the search for a Junior Data Engineer. This is a full-time, permanent position based in London, open to exceptional graduates through to candidates with up to three years' experience, offering a salary of £40,000-£60,000 depending on experience. This is not a narrow graduate scheme - you will write production code, solve live business problems, and learn directly from a senior engineer. We are looking to move quickly, with an ASAP start date and applications closing 20 September 2026.

About the Client

Our client is a private, entrepreneurial, family-owned real estate platform with a significant property portfolio and associated finance operations. The business is hiring a Junior Data Engineer to support a senior engineer in building out its internal data platform - the first phase of which will connect specialist domains including property management, asset management and accounting.

The Role

You will play a genuinely hands-on role, working alongside a senior engineer to build production systems from the ground up rather than shadowing existing ones. Expect real ownership over code, data pipelines and internal tools from an early stage, with the chance to learn directly from someone more senior as the platform - and your responsibilities - grow.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain a Python codebase and database responsible for ingesting, cleaning, validating and reconciling data from internal and third-party sources.
• Build REST APIs to serve as the bedrock of an internal platform.
• Investigate inconsistencies in existing internal data, write validation rules and document definitions, and help establish trusted datasets for asset management.
• Turn manual collection, checking, reconciliation, reminders, document generation and reporting tasks into dependable workflows.
• Create dashboards, reports, alerts and small internal tools for investment, asset management, finance and operations functions.
• Develop document extraction, retrieval and LLM-based workflows, including testing, evals and human-in-the-loop review mechanisms.
• Write clean, tested, high-quality code; use version control; monitor jobs; investigate failures; and maintain clear technical documentation.

Essential Requirements

• A rigorous degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Mathematics or a closely related discipline.
• Strong programming fundamentals in Python, TypeScript and SQL, demonstrated through useful software, research, internships, open-source work or a strong personal portfolio.
• Understanding of and experience with relational databases, data modelling, APIs and ETL/ELT pipelines, with an enthusiasm to deepen these skills.
• Care for readable code, testing, debugging, version control, and the difference between a promising prototype and a reliable production system.
• The patience to trace messy data through unfamiliar systems, identify root causes and verify that a solution works.
• A commercially minded, out-of-the-box thinker with an appetite to build and scale a platform.
• Strong professionalism and maturity.
• The ability to ask good questions, document decisions and explain technical issues to colleagues who do not write code.
• A grounded, collaborative and high-agency approach - willing to seek guidance, act on feedback, and take on increasing responsibility as capability grows.

Desirable Experience

• Internship, placement, research or project experience involving data pipelines, backend engineering, analytics engineering or automation.
• Familiarity with a cloud platform for application deployment, Docker, data warehouses, business-intelligence tools, or simple internal web applications.
• Practical exposure to LLM APIs, retrieval, evaluation, OCR or document-processing workflows.
• Interest in real estate, finance, accounting, asset management, construction or how operational businesses actually use data.
• Evidence of going beyond the teaching syllabus - a tool, service, open-source contribution, technical article or project used by someone other than you.

Working Environment

This is a full-time, permanent role based in London, working closely alongside a senior engineer within a small, entrepreneurial internal team. You will have genuine scope to shape the platform as it is built, with responsibility growing in line with your capability.

Appointment will be subject to appropriate references, background checks and a confidentiality agreement. Applicants from different backgrounds whose skills and evidence meet the requirements are welcome, and reasonable adjustments are available throughout the process.