The Data Platform Lead owns the technical direction and delivery of an enterprise data platform — the infrastructure that powers both analytics and AI. This is a senior technical leadership role combining hands-on architecture with team leadership, vendor management and strategic alignment to AI programme roadmaps. Role & Responsibilities: • Own the data platform strategy and roadmap: ingestion, transformation, storage, governance and serving layers, with specific attention to AI readiness • Lead a team of 6–12 data engineers: hiring, mentoring, performance management and technical direction • Define the platform architecture on Databricks and Azure: Unity Catalog governance, Medallion Architecture, Delta Live Tables and Feature Store • Ensure the data platform is AI-ready: feature stores, embedding pipelines, model training data and evaluation datasets • Own platform reliability and SLAs: incident response, capacity planning, cost management and performance optimisation • Lead vendor relationships: Databricks, Microsoft, dbt Labs — commercial negotiation and technical partnership • Define data engineering standards: coding practices, testing frameworks, documentation requirements and CI/CD patterns • Partner with AI programme leads to understand and deliver data requirements before they become blockers Required Skills & Experience: • 7+ years of data engineering experience with 3+ years in a lead or architecture role • Expert Databricks knowledge: Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, Workflows, Feature Store, Mosaic AI — in production at scale • Azure data platform depth: ADLS Gen2, ADF, Azure AI Search, Event Hub, Service Bus • Experience leading and growing data engineering teams — you have hired senior engineers and built team culture • Understanding of AI data requirements: you know what a RAG pipeline needs from a data platform • Strong communication: presenting platform strategy and investment cases to CDO and CTO level • Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional preferred; DP-700 is a strong advantage What We Offer: • Senior technical leadership with full platform ownership • Salary £90,000–£115,000 based on experience • Remote-first with team and stakeholder travel • Budget to invest in platform tooling and team development The Data Platform Lead ensures an enterprise data foundation is solid enough to support its AI ambitions. If you have led data platform engineering teams and understand the intersection of data infrastructure and AI delivery, this role is for you.
Remote · UK / India | £90,000–£115,000