Principal Data Engineer – Enterprise Data Products

We are seeking an experienced, hands-on Principal Data Engineer to play a key technical role within our Enterprise Data Products team.

Enterprise Data Products is progressing through a significant technology transformation and rearchitecture. You will join that journey in progress, quickly understand the existing landscape and agreed direction, and get hands-on in helping turn it into effective engineering solutions.

We are looking for someone who can add value quickly: bringing deep engineering experience, solving difficult problems, introducing new ideas and constructively challenging approaches where there is a better way. You will be technically curious, pragmatic and comfortable working with evolving or high-level requirements.

The Role

This is a senior individual contributor role with no direct people-management responsibility, reporting to the Technical Lead.

You will bring deep technical expertise and hands-on engineering experience across complex delivery, solution design, prototyping and problem solving. Working closely with the Technical Lead and wider engineering team, you will help evaluate technical options, develop pragmatic implementation approaches and turn agreed architectural direction into working solutions.

You will also act as a trusted technical sounding board, supporting engineers through practical collaboration, review, coaching and knowledge sharing across our geographically distributed team.

Solution Architecture & Technical Design

• Quickly understand the existing platform, architectural direction and transformation roadmap.
• Contribute hands-on expertise to the implementation and evolution of the target architecture.
• Develop solution designs and engineering approaches aligned with the agreed technical direction.
• Evaluate implementation options, balancing scalability, maintainability, performance, cost and delivery.
• Constructively challenge existing approaches and prototype alternatives where appropriate.
• Identify technical risks, dependencies and unknowns early and propose pragmatic solutions.

Data Engineering

• Design and build scalable, resilient and maintainable enterprise data solutions.
• Apply strong engineering practices using Databricks, Apache Spark/PySpark, Python, SQL and modern lakehouse technologies.
• Develop reusable patterns for data ingestion, transformation, integration and delivery.
• Design for incremental processing, schema evolution, reprocessing, performance and cost optimisation.
• Apply automated testing, CI/CD, observability, data quality, lineage and appropriate engineering controls.
• Investigate and resolve complex data, integration and platform problems.

Innovation & Continuous Improvement

• Explore technologies and engineering approaches that could improve Enterprise Data Products.
• Prototype promising ideas to validate their value and resolve technical unknowns.
• Identify opportunities to simplify solutions, automate activity and improve engineering effectiveness.
• Promote technical curiosity, experimentation and continuous improvement while maintaining engineering rigour.

Application & Integration Engineering

• Apply strong knowledge of modern application, API, authentication and cloud integration patterns.
• Work across data, application and platform technologies to develop coherent end-to-end solutions.
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams to translate business needs into practical technical solutions.

Technical Influence & Engineering Support

• Use technical expertise and hands-on experience to influence engineering decisions and approaches.
• Act as a technical sounding board for complex or unfamiliar problems.
• Support engineers through pairing, working examples, code and design reviews, coaching and knowledge sharing.
• Contribute to pragmatic engineering standards and reusable patterns.
• Help strengthen capability across a geographically distributed engineering team.
• Communicate technical options, trade-offs and recommendations clearly.

Estimation & Delivery

• Turn high-level requirements into technical approaches, identifying dependencies, risks and unknowns.
• Break complex problems into pragmatic, deliverable increments.
• Provide credible initial estimates, clearly identifying assumptions and uncertainty.
• Balance engineering quality, delivery speed, technical risk and long-term maintainability.

What you'll bring

Essential

• Deep hands-on experience with Databricks across implementation, development, production support and long-term maintenance.
• Significant experience delivering complex enterprise data engineering solutions.
• Strong hands-on experience developing production-quality Databricks notebooks using Python and SQL.
• Strong knowledge of modern data engineering, distributed processing and Lakehouse concepts.
• Experience with Apache Spark or comparable large-scale data technologies.
• Experience designing and implementing cloud-based data platforms and products.
• Strong knowledge of data modelling, ingestion, transformation and integration patterns.
• Experience with automated testing, source control and CI/CD.
• Strong troubleshooting and technical problem-solving capability.
• Experience contributing to technology modernisation, migration or architectural transformation.
• Ability to turn high-level or evolving requirements into pragmatic solutions and initial estimates.
• Experience influencing and supporting engineers without direct line-management responsibility.

Desirable

• Hands-on experience designing and delivering solutions using other lakehouse platforms, such as Microsoft Fabric.
• Experience with Azure data platforms and cloud services.
• Experience modernising established enterprise data estates.
• Experience with data governance, metadata, lineage, observability and data quality.
• Experience building reusable engineering frameworks or platform capabilities.
• Experience with modern APIs, integrations and web application technologies.

What we offer

Enjoy a benefits package designed to help you thrive, both professionally and personally. You'll receive 25 days of annual leave plus an extra WTW day to relax and recharge. Our comprehensive health and wellbeing offering includes private healthcare, life insurance, group income protection, and regular health assessments, all giving you peace of mind. Secure your future with our defined contribution pension scheme, featuring matched contributions up to 10% from the company.

We support your growth and balance with hybrid working options, access to an employee assistance programme, and a fully paid volunteer day to make a difference in your community. On top of these, you can opt into a variety of additional perks including an electric vehicle car scheme, share scheme, cycle-to-work programme, dental and optical cover, critical illness protection, and much more. Start making the most of your career and wellbeing with a range of benefits tailored for you.

Equal Opportunity Employer

We’re committed to equal employment opportunity and provide application, interview and workplace adjustments and accommodations to all applicants. If you foresee any barriers, from the application process through to joining WTW, please email candidatehelpdesk@wtwco.com