DURATION: Until 31 December 2026, with potential to extend for a further 6 months
LOCATION: London
ONSITE REQUIREMENTS: Hybrid - 2 days per week onsite in London
ENGAGEMENT TYPE: Outside IR35
DAY RATE: £700 per day (DoE)
LEGAL RIGHT TO WORK
Candidates must have the legal right to work in the UK. Sponsorship is not available for this role.
GIBBS CONSULTING SUMMARY
We are growing, and as part of that journey Gibbs Consulting is expanding our Data Product Feature Team to support a major client project within the banking industry. We are looking for an experienced Data Engineering Lead to lead a team of six Senior Data Engineers delivering for our end-customer.
JOB OVERVIEW
We are looking for a hands-on Data Engineering Lead who can combine strong technical data engineering expertise with leadership and delivery ownership. You will lead a team of six Senior Data Engineers, providing technical direction, setting engineering standards and ensuring the team delivers high-quality, scalable data solutions. This is not a hands-off management role. You will remain technically involved and should be comfortable contributing to code, reviewing engineering solutions, solving complex technical problems and supporting the team when required.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Lead and manage a team of six Senior Data Engineers within the Data Product Feature Team.
- Own the technical direction and engineering delivery across the team.
- Provide hands-on technical leadership across Python, SQL and cloud-based data engineering.
- Set and maintain coding standards, engineering best practices and development approaches.
- Review code and technical designs, providing guidance and constructive challenge to Senior Data Engineers.
- Design and oversee scalable data pipelines, transformations and data processing solutions.
- Lead engineering delivery across GCP services including BigQuery, Dataflow, Dataproc and Cloud Storage.
- Support complex data transformation, matching and merge processes and identity resolution.
- Ensure appropriate data quality, lineage, governance and engineering controls are embedded within solutions.
- Identify and remove technical blockers impacting the engineering team.
- Mentor and support Senior Data Engineers while maintaining accountability for delivery and technical quality.
- Work closely with architecture, product and delivery teams to turn requirements into effective engineering solutions.
- Contribute to cloud migration and wider data platform modernisation activities.
- Ensure engineering solutions are scalable, maintainable and aligned with the wider data architecture.
REQUIREMENTS
- Strong hands-on background in data engineering with experience as a Data Engineering Lead, Lead Data Engineer or similar.
- Proven experience leading and managing a team of experienced Data Engineers.
- Strong hands-on coding experience using Python and SQL.
- Strong experience designing and building scalable data pipelines and data transformation solutions.
- Hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform.
- Experience with GCP data technologies such as BigQuery, Dataflow, Dataproc and Cloud Storage.
- Experience with dbt or similar data transformation tooling.
- Strong understanding of data engineering principles, coding standards, testing and CI/CD.
- Experience with data quality, lineage and governance.
- Ability to conduct code reviews and provide technical guidance to experienced engineers.
- Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to take ownership of complex engineering challenges.
- Strong stakeholder management skills and the ability to work across engineering, architecture, product and delivery teams.
- Comfortable joining a contract engagement and taking ownership of a team and delivery from the outset.
NICE TO HAVE
- Previous experience within banking or financial services.
- Experience working within a data product or feature team environment.
- Experience with identity resolution, matching and merge processes or complex customer datasets.
- Experience supporting large-scale cloud migration or data platform modernisation programmes.