Head of Data Engineering in Slough

Reporting Into: Director, Data Monetisation

Direct Reports: 4

When Needed: Q1 2026

About the role

As the Head of Data Engineering, you will be responsible for leading and mentoring a team in the creation and maintenance of our strategic data products. This programme operates within data monetisation and AI application, developing high value customer signals and data segments derived from a complex, multi source data ecosystem. This is a high impact, varied role combining technical leadership and hands-on activity. You will define the architectural strategy for our extensible and reusable data platform and act as the team’s delivery lead, managing the agile workflow and roadmap priorities in coordination with senior management and key stakeholders. Working primarily in the Google Cloud ecosystem, you will make high level decisions on data platforms, governance, data privacy and lead the evaluation and adoption of new technologies to drive innovation across the team.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and own the technical strategy and architecture for the data product platform, ensuring systems are extensible, reusable and scalable.
• Lead the team’s agile process, facilitating stand ups, managing the backlog and setting roadmap priorities with senior stakeholders.
• Mentor a team of Product Data Engineers, providing technical guidance, support and fostering professional growth.
• Drive high standards for data quality, output accuracy, platform SLAs, data privacy and governance.
• Evaluate, prototype and recommend new technologies and tooling to continuously improve team efficiency and product capabilities.
• Maintain an understanding of data consumers and paying customers to ensure product development is aligned with high value business outcomes.
• Ensure data lineage, accessibility, privacy and security are correctly implemented throughout the data lifecycle.

The must haves

• Proven technical leadership (leading a team of engineers remotely, probing architectural decisions, driving innovation and appropriate practices for the team).
• Full stack experience with designing complex architecture @ scale, data ingestion processes, ML/AI modelling and analytics to create end-to-end solution.
• Demonstrable experience in Google Cloud or similar to build scalable and secure data solutions, utilising technologies such as: BigQuery, BQ Sharing (Analytics Hub), Cloud Functions and DBT Cloud.
• Value creation mindset with ability to demonstrate data product adoption, time and costs incurred.
• Facilitating effective communication inside and outside the team. Ability to communicate with people at all levels, from Staff to C-Suite level, from technical to non-technical.
• Experience in building SaaS / data products for external partner usage (involving partner collaboration, integration, data contracts and privacy constraints).
• Excellent at handling ambiguity in fast-paced, evolving environment with expertise in agile delivery practices and usage of Confluence and Jira.
• Demonstrable experience and ability to coach teams using Python and SQL.

The other stuff we're looking for

• Experience in building new products from scratch (over maintaining legacy systems).
• Experience working with sensitive datasets in regulated industries (telco or equivalent).
• Experience with data cleanrooms (Google, Snowflake or equivalent).

At Virgin Media O2 we're going All In, to remove bias and barriers for our people and our candidates. We're working hard to achieve bold ambitions, to help us better represent the diverse communities we serve across the UK. As an equal opportunities employer, we support and encourage you, to be your authentic self throughout your application journey.

What's in it for you?

We know that benefits mean so much more than the 'stuff' we can give you, so we offer a wide range of support, rewards, and tools - all focused on helping you to prioritise what really matters. All work and no play just isn't our style! We're already planning our future ways of working, for when life becomes a little more normal again. We're constantly evolving our approach to enable you to find a great work life balance.

Next steps

If we feel like a place where you can belong, we'd love to learn more about you. Once you've submitted an application the next steps of the process, if successful, is likely to include a two-stage interview process. When you apply, you'll be asked about any adjustments you might need to support the recruitment process. Let us know, and we'll be sure to discuss it with you. Thanks for your patience in the meantime and for showing an interest in joining the Virgin Media O2 family.