Technical Lead, Data Platform Engineer

Overview

In this role you will lead the Data Platform that serves all Funding Circle data teams, guiding the move to Snowflake and a Data as a Product model. You’ll transform target architecture into a clear engineering plan and drive alignment across teams. You’ll own platform quality, governance, and cost controls while enabling data scientists, analysts, and AI agents to build on the platform. You’ll mentor engineers and shape scalable patterns, contributing to a mission that fuels UK small businesses.

Pay / Benefits

• flexible-first benefit allowance
• private medical and dental
• life assurance and share schemes
• annual learning allowance
• electric car and cycle-to-work schemes
• season ticket loans

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the engineering plan for the Data Platform and Snowflake migration
• Own platform quality: Snowflake infra, RBAC, ingestion, orchestration (Airflow), CI/CD, observability, cost controls
• Document and review technical decisions; escalate cross-domain issues
• Grow and mentor the team; promote fast, deep code reviews and knowledge sharing
• Define standards and reusable patterns to enable domain teams, Data Scientists, Analysts, and AI Agents
• Ensure DP reviews do not block domain teams; collaborate with platform users
• Oversee operational excellence: on-call quality, incidents, runbooks, disaster recovery
• Maintain security and governance controls with Security and Data Governance
• Manage relationships with platform vendors; handle support, escalations, and roadmaps
• Communicate trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders; support AI-assisted engineering governance
• Collaborate with the Principal Engineer to execute cross-domain architecture through the platform team

Key requirements

• 8+ years in Data & Analytics with architectural leadership experience
• Deep Snowflake knowledge, ideally Iceberg/OpenTable formats and RBAC
• Advanced SQL, Python, and enterprise-grade dbt development
• Experience designing end-to-end data pipelines (batch, file-based, streaming with Kafka/CDC) using Airflow
• Understanding of data security and governance, including PII handling and access control
• Strong IaC and CI/CD skills
• Proven ability to write clear design docs and communicate risks to non-technical stakeholders
• Ability to design AI solutions and safe, scalable automated systems; mentor builders across the company
• Experience bridging technical and non-technical teams; cross-domain collaboration

• leadership and mentoring
• clear communication with non-technical stakeholders
• collaboration and cross-functional teamwork
• Snowflake (RBAC, data sharing, performance tuning)
• Iceberg/OpenTable formats
• SQL, Python

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