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.