Staff Data Engineer (Contract)

Salary: £? - ? per year

Requirements

• Deep hands-on expertise in Python, PySpark, and Apache Spark
• Strong AWS data engineering experience, particularly with AWS Glue
• Strong Apache Airflow experience
• Experience delivering complex data transformation or modernisation programmes
• Strong software engineering fundamentals
• Experience operating at Staff, Principal, or Senior Lead Engineer level
• Ability to independently challenge existing thinking and shape technical solutions
• Genuine desire to remain hands‑on with code
• Experience incorporating AI-assisted development tools into engineering workflows
• Snowflake experience is beneficial

Responsibilities

• Provide Staff-level technical leadership across complex data engineering initiatives
• Remain deeply hands‑on with Python, PySpark, and Spark
• Modernise and migrate large-scale data pipelines across AWS
• Design and challenge approaches involving AWS Glue, Airflow, and associated technologies
• Shape scalable data architectures, frameworks, and engineering patterns
• Support the development of new data products and reusable capabilities
• Champion AI-assisted development to improve engineering quality and delivery speed
• Raise engineering standards and capability across multiple teams
• Help shape technical strategy while building and proving solutions in code

Technologies

• AI
• Airflow
• AWS
• AWS Glue
• Support
• Python
• PySpark
• Snowflake
• Spark
• Cloud

More

Were supporting a major UK financial services organisation through a significant data engineering modernisation and transformation programme. This Staff-level contract role involves modernising the organisations data estate, transforming and migrating large-scale pipelines, developing new data products, and adopting modern AI-assisted engineering practices. It is a hybrid position based in London, with three days per week on‑site. The initial contract is six months, with a rate of up to £1,300 per day, inside IR35.