Principal Data Engineer
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer13 days ago
Manchester, United KingdomStaff+
Responsibilities
- Design and maintain scalable, secure Azure data lake and lakehouse solutions for real-time insight, advanced analytics, and AI/ML.
- Develop and optimise batch and streaming ETL/ELT pipelines using Azure Data Factory, PySpark, SQL, Apache Spark, Airflow, dbt, and Git-based tooling.
- Implement enterprise data cataloguing, lineage tracking, and governance frameworks using Collibra or similar tools.
- Lead, coach, recruit, and develop the Data Engineering team, including supporting performance management and engineering best-practice adoption.
- Define engineering strategy with Data Office leadership, support delivery planning, and build a collaborative culture across a geographically dispersed team.
- Monitor and tune data jobs for performance, scalability, and cost while embedding validation, logging, and monitoring.
Requirements
- Experience designing and delivering enterprise data lake or lakehouse architectures in a cloud environment, ideally Microsoft Azure.
- Hands-on expertise with Databricks, Spark, PySpark, SQL, and core Azure Data Services including Data Lake Storage, Synapse Analytics, and Data Factory.
- Experience with data governance and cataloguing tools such as Collibra or Purview, plus familiarity with dbt, CI/CD, and streaming frameworks.
- Genuine leadership experience with a focus on developing people as well as building systems.
- Strong communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences and a resilient, proactive approach.
Benefits
- Employment is conditional on having or securing the right to work in the UK and providing evidence before employment begins.
- Freshfields is an equal opportunities employer and considers applications on merit regardless of background.
- Freshfields is a Ban the Box employer; criminal convictions are disclosed only after a conditional offer and considered case by case.
Tech Stack
Categories
Data Engineering
About Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer is a global law firm advising corporations, financial institutions, and governments on complex transactions, disputes, and regulatory matters across jurisdictions. Structured as a partnership headquartered in London and founded in 1743, it operates offices across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the United States. Its fee-based practice spans M&A, antitrust, arbitration and litigation, finance and capital markets, and compliance and investigations.