Principal Data Engineer

Working at CreateFuture CreateFuture is an AI-native consulting partner where people do work that matters and are supported to do it well. We work alongside organisations such as PayPal, adidas, NatWest, FanDuel and Money Saving Expert, building digital products and services that make a difference while always putting people first. We’re a team of creators. We write code, shape delivery, build go-to-market strategies, develop AI solutions and create the practices that support our people. We work side by side with our clients, challenging what’s not working and helping them to build the future. Our commitment to craft, quality, and culture has helped us scale to over 600 people in just a few years. CreateFuture is a Great Place to Work-Certified™ company and has won Best Workplaces UK multiple years in a row. Join us on our journey. Let’s create tomorrow, together, today. About The Role And Team We're looking for a Principal Data Engineer to join our Data Practice and lead the technical direction of our engineering capability. You'll work across a portfolio of clients spanning multiple industries, helping some of the most ambitious organisations in the UK solve their hardest data problems.A Principal at CreateFuture operates above the delivery line as well as within it. You'll define how we solve the hardest data engineering problems across our client base, influence the shape of engagements from pre-sales through to delivery, grow the data talent around you, and be a recognisable voice for CreateFuture in the data engineering community. What You'll Be Doing Technical leadership Defining and owning the data engineering architecture patterns CreateFuture uses across client engagements — migration frameworks, streaming architectures, data integrity standards, and Lakehouse designActing as the most senior technical authority on client engagements — making critical architecture decisions, resolving design disputes, and setting the bar for qualityReviewing and signing off technical designs produced by Lead and Senior engineers across active engagementsIdentifying and driving the adoption of new tooling, patterns, and cloud services that improve delivery outcomes across the data practice Delivery Leading the technical design and execution of large-scale data migrations — moving high-volume transactional and event data from on-premises or legacy cloud estates to modern cloud platforms, without loss of fidelity or operational continuityArchitecting real-time and near-real-time data pipelines for clients with demanding latency and correctness requirementsDesigning and enforcing data integrity frameworks across critical data domains — including reconciliation between source and target systems, anomaly detection, and audit trail requirementsOverseeing the implementation of regulatory and compliance reporting pipelines where relevant to a client's sectorWorking with cloud data services (e.g. S3, Glue, Lambda, Athena, Redshift, RDS, Kinesis, MSK, Lake Formation, Step Functions, MWAA, or their equivalents on other platforms) — selecting the right tool for each problem rather than defaulting to a stack Practice and people Mentoring and growing Lead and Senior Data Engineers — through code review, pairing, architecture sessions, and career conversationsBuilding CreateFuture's data engineering playbook: reusable patterns, accelerators, and reference architectures that reduce time-to-value on new engagementsContributing to hiring — defining what great looks like for data engineering roles and playing an active part in assessmentRepresenting CreateFuture externally — at industry events, in technical blog posts, and in client-facing settings — as a credible voice on data engineeringWorking closely with the Head of Data to enable the growth of the right skills and capabilities to meet client needs. Commercial Shaping and leading technical responses to opportunities — scoping complex engagements, writing architecture proposals, and presenting to senior client stakeholdersIdentifying expansion opportunities within existing client relationships — spotting data engineering problems we can help solve and framing them as propositionsPartnering with cloud providers on joint go-to-market activity where relevant, leveraging CreateFuture's partner status What We're Looking For Consulting background You've spent a significant part of your career in a consultancy, professional services, or client-facing delivery environment — you know how to build trust quickly, work across ambiguous or fast-changing requirements, and deliver under commercial pressureYou're comfortable moving between clients and industries, ramping up on new domains quickly rather than relying on years of embedded contextYou've shaped and sold technical work — writing proposals, scoping engagements, and presenting architecture decisions to client stakeholdersYou understand the difference between "good engineering" and "good engineering for this client, this budget, this timeline" — and can navigate that trade-off transparently Cloud data engineering mastery You can design across the full data engineering stack — from ingestion and streaming through to warehousing, serving, and cost optimisation — on a major cloud platform (AWS strongly preferred)You have deep experience with streaming architectures — Kinesis, Kafka/MSK, Flink, or Spark Streaming — and know when each is the right choiceYou can model the cost implications of architecture decisions and advise clients on trade-offs between throughput, latency, durability, and spendCloud certification at professional or specialty level is strongly preferred Engineering excellence Mastery of Python, SQL, and Spark — and strong opinions on how they should be used in production data pipelinesDeep experience with dbt, Airflow, or equivalent orchestration — including how to build pipelines that are testable, observable, and operationally soundStrong understanding of data quality engineering — not just validation rules, but how to build systems that detect and surface integrity issues before they reach consumersComfortable with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, AWS CDK) and treating data platform infrastructure as a first-class engineering concern Leadership You've operated at Principal or equivalent level — making architectural decisions that affect multiple teams, and being accountable for their outcomesYou're comfortable in C-suite and VP-level client conversations, translating technical complexity into business risk and opportunityYou can hold a room on a difficult technical topic and reach a decision — not just present optionsYou've grown engineering talent around you and take it seriously as a leadership responsibility What We’ll Offer You We trust people to do their best work. That means flexibility over rigid rules, impact over activity, and real investment in your growth both professionally and personally. You’ll be part of a supportive, and friendly culture, surrounded by smart, curious people who care deeply about what they do. We offer flexible working, including hybrid and remote options. Our office hubs are located in Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, London and Bulgaria, with occasional travel to client sites or CreateFuture offices when needed. We trust you to manage your time balancing collaboration with client time and focused work. What matters is the impact you have, not how busy you look. Our hiring process We try to keep our hiring process clear, fair and respectful of your time. We aim to get back to everyone who applies and we will be upfront about where you are in the process. It Usually Looks Like This Call with our Talent Acquisition Team Role specific capability interview Depending on the role, we might also ask you to do a short presentation, a practical or technical task or have a values focused conversation. We will explain what is involved before anything happens. Inclusion at CreateFuture We believe diverse teams build better workplaces and better products. We want CreateFuture to be a place where people feel able to be themselves and do their best work. If you need any adjustments or support during the application process, just. We will do what we can to help. We look forward to your application!