Lead Data Engineer

Company Description

Blend (previously Forth Point) is an award-winning pure play data consultancy who help people do data right through project delivery across strategy and consulting, data science and BI, and data engineering. As a trusted Data & AI partner we co-create value with clients across a wide variety of industries. Our company has made the Inc. 5000 list of Fastest Growing Companies and currently have offices in Edinburgh, the Netherlands, the US, Uruguay and India. 

By combining our teams’ expert technical knowledge with a practical approach to value creation, we deliver outcomes that make a real change for our clients. From using computer vision to remotely monitor crops to implementing a BI dashboard to help swimmers win more medals – nothing we do is designed to be left on the shelf.

Job Description

Life as a Lead Data Engineer at Blend  

We are looking for someone who is excited by the idea leading a data engineering squad to develop best in clast analytical infrastructures and pipeline. 

However, they also need to be aware of the practicalities of making a difference in the real world – whilst we love innovative advanced solutions, we also believe that sometimes a simple solution can have the most impact.  

Our Lead Data Engineer is someone who feels the most comfortable around solving problems, answering questions and proposing solutions. We place a high value on the ability to communicate and translate complex analytical thinking into non-technical and commercially oriented concepts, and experience working on difficult projects and/or with demanding stakeholders is always appreciated. 

Reporting to the Director of Data Engineering the role will work closely with the other Data Engineering Leads and other capabilities in the organisation such as the Data Science, Data Strategy  and Business Development teams. 

This role will be responsible for driving high delivery standards and innovation within the data engineering team and the wider company. This involves delivering data solutions to support the provision of actionable insights for stakeholders. 

Our Data Engineering Leads still remain hands-on and work with the Data Engineers within their squad. 

What can you expect from the role? 

• Lead on project delivery and project governance from a Data Engineering perspective.
• Manage squad of Data Engineers from Junior to Senior, covering resource utilisation, training and recruitment. 
• Preparing and presenting data driven solutions to stakeholders.
• Design, develop, deploy and maintain ingestion, transformation and storage solutions.
• Maintain in-depth knowledge of data ecosystems and trends.
• Inputs into proposal submissions and business development initiatives from a Data Engineering perspective.
• Demonstrate and champions good (data) engineering practices to minimise future technical debt.
• Evolve the data engineering ways of working and best practices within own squad and the wider team.
• Contributing and owning workstreams within the Data Engineering strategy and GTM with the Data Engineering Director.

Qualifications

What you need to have? 

• Proven track record of designing, building, deploying an analytical data infrastructure with focus on defining end-to-end data architecture and solutions.
• Working knowledge of large-scale data concepts such as data warehouses, data lakes and ML solutions and their best practices and principles in managing them.
• Experience with development, test and production environments and knowledge and experience of using CI/CD.
• ETL technical design, development and support.
• Expert level understanding, both conceptually and in practice of Python. 
• Expert SQL skills. 
• Excellent understanding at least one cloud platform. 
• Good understanding of enterprise coding best practices as well as general CI/CD practices with top tier source code repository management experience.
• Self-starter and strong interpersonal skills. 
• Effective communication and coaching skills. 

Nice to have 

• Designed and implemented a Databricks solution.
• IAC experience (e.g., CloudFormation, Terraform).
• Low level cloud infrastructure management. 
• Machine Learning deployment.
• Experience of leveraging data out of SAP or S/4HANA.

Additional Information

*No agencies please.