Vetted on a call by a Wave consultant, not scraped. £110,000 and above.
Taking a betting and gaming group's whole data estate to AWS, with Databricks and a medallion lakehouse at the centre, streaming and event-driven pipelines, and ML pipeline integration on top. Stays in the detail on pipeline design, cost optimisation, testing standards and platform reliability rather than signing work off from a distance. The last year has gone into knowledge engineering, vector databases and agentic workflows.
Looking forGrew the team from 7 to 11 plus contractors and now feels the scope is smaller than the level they are operating at. Wants a broader remit, a thin director layer above them and real ownership. Databricks in the stack is close to a requirement.
How they came acrossCommunication was the standout, easily the best we have heard from a data leader this year. Comfortable on the commercial side too, contract negotiation, performance management and disciplinaries, which not many data people are.
Databricks, Spark, SQL · AWS, Bedrock, Unity Catalog · Medallion architecture, lakehouse, streaming · Power BI, SSIS, CI/CD
Four employers over 16 years, from a contact centre analyst role into database development and BI at a consumer lender, then data platform leadership in betting and gaming. Average tenure 2 years 3 months, longest 4 years 9 months.
3 months notice, and the package matters: pension, a full compensation approach and a bonus they can realistically hit. Wants Databricks in the stack and a visible route upwards.
GCP through and through: BigQuery, Airflow Composer, dbt, Cloud Run, Pub/Sub and Bigtable, with Terraform and Kubernetes for the platform layer and Great Expectations for data quality. Certified Google Cloud Architect. Came into data engineering out of simulation engineering on a car manufacturer's performance vehicle division, which is an unusual route and a useful one.
Looking forSurvived a restructure that cut 1,000 people and disliked both how it was handled and what it did to the projects they were leading. Wants a founding or early-stage data engineering role, hands-on with the architecture, and would take on 4 or 5 engineers. Fintech appeals, betting does not.
How they came acrossApplied for the role themselves rather than waiting to be approached, which is rare at this level. Talks about resource constraints and what actually shipped rather than technology for its own sake.
Python, SQL, dbt · BigQuery, Bigtable, CloudSQL · Airflow, Dataflow, Pub/Sub · GCP, Kubernetes, Terraform
Just 2 employers in 12 years, a car manufacturer where they moved from simulation engineering into data, then a grocery technology business. Average tenure 3 years, longest 3 years 10 months.
3 months notice, and they have ruled out betting on regulatory grounds and large slow-moving corporates in general. Deep on GCP, much lighter on AWS and Azure.
Masters in Computer-Aided Engineering. Certified Professional Google Cloud Architect.
Heads several engineering teams at a fashion e-commerce business, owning the data platform that serves the ML models. Azure with Spark and Databricks, lakehouse and Lakeflow, Terraform and Azure DevOps, written in Python, Scala and SQL. Came up through market surveillance BI at a financial markets regulator and a commodities exchange, so governance and regulated data are second nature.
Looking forA new CTO is running AI-led redundancies every December and cross-training the platform team into ML roles. They want out before it reaches them, and they do not want to become an ML engineer. Aiming at staff engineer with leadership attached, and remote-first is firm.
How they came acrossThinking several moves ahead about redundancy risk rather than reacting to it, and handled the conversation professionally. Wants the blend of technical management, code reviews and upskilling rather than pure people management.
Python, Scala, SQL, Spark · Databricks, Lakehouse, ADF, Lakeflow · Azure, AWS · Terraform, Azure DevOps
Seven employers over 29 years, from application support and DBA work at a builders merchant and the London branch of a Spanish bank, through a commodities exchange and a financial regulator, into lead data engineering in e-commerce. Average tenure 3 years 10 months, longest 11 years 1 month.
Remote-first is non-negotiable, partly because a move to Essex costs them £35 a day to commute. Will not move from data engineering into ML engineering.
Masters in Financial Regulation. Databricks Lakehouse Fundamentals and Microsoft SQL Server certifications.
Tell me which came closest and I recalibrate, then come back with 10 to 15 more inside 24 hours.
Show me the wider bank