Data Engineering Manager

Job Summary

We are seeking a highly capable Senior Data Engineering Lead / Manager to guide and develop our Data Platform team within a dynamic UK insurance company. This role blends hands on technical leadership with emerging people management responsibilities, making it ideal for someone looking to progress into a full Engineering Manager role.

You will lead a team of four data engineers (2 Senior, 2 Data Engineers), shaping the technical direction of our GCP based platform while ensuring high quality delivery across multiple workstreams. You will design and implement scalable systems, frameworks and processes that improve the long term reliability and simplicity of our data estate.

You will work closely with cross functional teams including other data teams, Product and Engineering to ensure alignment, reduce coordination cost and deliver a platform that enables high quality insights and innovation.

Key Responsibilities

• Team Leadership & Management
• Lead the Data Platform team, ensuring smooth delivery across multiple engineers and workstreams.
• Run daily stand-ups using agile methodologies to maintain high team engagement and efficient project execution.
• Set individual objectives and develop personal development plans for the team, supporting a culture of continuous improvement.
• Platform Strategy & Technical Leadership
  • Provide hands on technical contribution across GCP, BigQuery, dbt, Airflow and Python, supporting the team in designing and building scalable, reliable data pipelines and models.
  • Ensure the team maintains a clear technical roadmap, outlining future development direction, platform improvements and long-term sustainability.
  • Drive core engineering processes (code reviews, design discussions, incident reviews, quality standards) to ensure consistent, high quality delivery.
  • Identify opportunities to simplify and improve the technical estate.
  • Collaborate with upstream engineering teams to ensure high quality data ingestion and alignment on architectural patterns.
  • Champion platform observability, ensuring robust monitoring, alerting and data quality practices.
  • Stay updated on emerging trends and technologies in data engineering and the pet insurance industry, implementing new methodologies, tools and frameworks to enhance data processes.
• Stakeholder Engagement & Communication
  • Work closely with Data Analytics, Data Science and Product teams to ensure the platform supports their needs and that cross team dependencies are well understood.
  • Communicate technical risks, trade-offs and dependencies clearly, helping the organisation prioritise effectively and reduce unnecessary work.
  • Support data literacy and adoption by contributing to training, demos and knowledge sharing sessions across the organisation.
  • Maintain clear documentation of platform architecture, the data warehouse, processes and standards.
  • Contribute to a fast-paced, scale-up environment by adapting to changing business needs and providing innovative data-driven solutions.
• Governance, Reliability & Compliance
  • Champion strong data governance practices, including data quality, lineage, access controls and retention policies.
  • Ensure platform reliability and operational excellence, contributing to monitoring, alerting, and incident response processes.
  • Maintain compliance with data privacy, security and regulatory requirements to ensure safe and responsible data use.

Key Requirements & Qualifications

• Experience & Expertise
  • Strong background in data engineering within cloud‑based environments (GCP/AWS/Azure).
  • Demonstrable experience in key data software and technologies (e.g. SQL, Python, BigQuery, Snowflake, dBT, Airflow, etc.).
  • Proven ability to design and optimise scalable data pipelines and dimensional models.
  • Experience leading and mentoring engineers and running agile ceremonies.
  • Proficient in implementing data governance practices, including data ownership, lineage and quality monitoring.
  • Track record of leading data driven transformation and delivering fit for purpose, cost optimised data solutions.
  • Experience identifying and framing broad technical problems and driving sustainable solutions across multiple squads.
• Skills & Competencies
  • Strong leadership and people development skills, with the ability to guide engineers at different levels.
  • Excellent communication skills, able to translate technical concepts into business friendly language.
  • Strategic mindset with strong problem solving and architectural thinking.
  • Ability to balance hands on delivery with team leadership.
  • A commitment to fostering a high performance engineering culture and continuous improvement in data governance and product maintenance.