Staff Data Engineer | Contract | Up To £1,300/Day | Inside IR35

Staff Data Engineer | Contract | Up to £1,300/day | Inside IR35

Location: Hybrid - London (3 days per week on-site)

Rate: Up to £1,300/day

Contract: Initial 6 months

IR35: Inside IR35

We're supporting a major UK financial services organisation through a significant programme of data engineering modernisation and transformation.

We're looking for a genuinely Staff-level Data Engineer who combines deep hands-on engineering capability with the technical leadership to challenge existing approaches, shape solutions and raise engineering standards across multiple teams.

This is not a hands-off architecture role. You'll be expected to shape the thinking, design the solution and get into the code to prove and deliver it.

The role

You'll work across a major modernisation of the organisation's data estate, including the transformation and migration of large-scale data pipelines, development of new data products and adoption of modern, AI-assisted engineering practices.

Responsibilities will include:

• Providing Staff-level technical leadership across complex data engineering initiatives
• Remaining deeply hands-on with Python, PySpark and Spark
• Modernising and migrating large-scale data pipelines across AWS
• Designing and challenging approaches across AWS Glue, Airflow and associated technologies
• Shaping scalable data architectures, frameworks and engineering patterns
• Supporting the development of new data products and reusable capabilities
• Championing AI-assisted development to improve engineering quality and delivery speed
• Raising engineering standards and capability across multiple teams

What we're looking for

• Deep hands-on Python/PySpark and Apache Spark expertise
• Strong AWS data engineering, particularly AWS Glue
• Strong Apache Airflow experience
• Experience delivering complex data transformation or modernisation programmes
• Strong software engineering fundamentals
• Experience operating at Staff, Principal or Senior Lead Engineer level
• Ability to independently challenge thinking and shape technical solutions
• Genuine desire to remain hands‑on with code
• Experience incorporating AI-assisted development tools into engineering workflows
• Snowflake experience would be beneficial

The sweet spot is someone who can operate across both technical strategy and hands‑on delivery - setting the engineering direction while still being capable of building and proving the solution