Contract Principal Data Engineer

Key Responsibilities

• Act as a trusted technical advisor across client engagements.
• Build strong relationships with senior stakeholders, delivery leads and
  engineering teams.
• Translate complex technical concepts into clear business value and delivery
  outcomes.
• Support clients through technical decision-making, platform strategy and
  roadmap planning.

• Lead the design and implementation of enterprise-scale Databricks solutions and modern data platforms.
• Provide architectural leadership across cloud-native data engineering
  initiatives.
• Define engineering standards, best practices and scalable delivery approaches.
• Drive platform optimisation, resilience and performance improvements.

• Lead technical delivery across multiple client engagements within a consultancy environment.
• Work closely with cross-functional teams including Data Engineers, Architects, Product Owners and client stakeholders.
• Support project planning, technical governance and delivery execution.
• Ensure high-quality, scalable and maintainable engineering solutions.

• Mentor and guide engineering teams across modern data engineering practices.
• Lead technical problem-solving and incident resolution where required.
• Drive adoption of engineering best practices, automation and DevOps
  principles.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

• Proven experience operating as a Principal Data Engineer, Lead Data Engineer or Data Architect within enterprise environments.
• Strong consultancy and client-facing experience, ideally across multiple customer engagements.
• Deep expertise in Databricks, including architecture, optimisation and leading delivery teams.
• Strong experience designing and delivering cloud-native data platforms within
  Azure and/or AWS environments.
• Advanced experience with PySpark, SparkSQL and large-scale distributed data processing.
• Strong understanding of modern data architecture, ETL/ELT frameworks and
  data modelling. 
• Excellent SQL skills and experience working with large-scale datasets.
• Strong understanding of data governance, security and platform reliability
  principles.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management and consulting skills.
• Ability to operate confidently in fast-paced, delivery-focused environments

Benefits

• Opportunity to work on complex, high-impact client programmes.
• Exposure to enterprise-scale Data & AI transformation initiatives.
• Flexible remote-first working model aligned to client requirements.
• Access to AWS & Databricks partner training and certifications.
•  Collaborative culture focused on technical excellence and innovation.
• Opportunity to influence engineering standards, delivery capability and client success across Colibri Digital.