Data Engineering Lead

Salary: up to £60k depending on experience (Band 3)   Our first shop opened in 1981 in Penzance, selling durable clothing to artists and mariners. Today, we’re a modern, data-enabled omnichannel retailer with a growing international presence. We blend heritage with innovation, designing timeliness clothing made from responsibility sourced fabrics, and using technology to improve how we operate, grow and serve customers.    As we scale in the UK and Europe (primarily through third-party partnerships), we’re investing in data, systems and digital capability to support our people and our growth. It’s an exciting time to join us!    Our Data Engineering Lead plays an important role in shaping how data supports the business. You’ll lead the development of a modern, scalable data platform, making sure data is reliable, well organised and ready for reporting, analysis and day to day decision making. By setting clear standards and guiding how data solutions are built, you’ll help create a consistent and dependable data environment that can grow with the business.  Working closely with teams across data, technology and the wider organisation, you’ll take a collaborative approach to improving how data is delivered and used. You’ll also lead and support a team of Data Engineers, helping them grow while staying hands on with technical decisions and problem solving, ensuring the team delivers high quality work in a fast-moving environment.  Please note this is a full-time, permanent role which is based remotely within the UK, with occasional travel to our Cornwall head offices.  You’ll help us by  Providing technical leadership across the design, development and optimisation of Seasalt’s Modern Data Platform, ensuring pipelines, models and data products are robust, scalable and maintainable.  Defining and owning data engineering standards, including coding conventions, documentation, version control, testing and CI/CD practices.  Leading the architecture and design of ingestion, transformation and modelling patterns, guiding the transition toward a Lakehouse architecture to ensure consistency.  Overseeing the build and maintenance of ingestion pipelines, curated datasets (bronze/silver/gold), semantic models and reusable data assets.  Working in close partnership with Data Support and Analytics roles to ensure platform reliability, effective incident resolution, reduced technical debt and analytics‑ready datasets with consistent metrics.  Driving continuous improvement by identifying opportunities for automation, performance optimisation, cost reduction and improved engineering efficiency.  Maintaining clear architectural documentation including data flows diagrams, lineage, standard and technical patterns to support transparency and long‑term platform sustainability.  Planning and coordinating engineering resource across delivery initiatives, balancing BAU stability with strategic change and transformation programmes.  Line manage and developing Data Engineers, providing coaching, technical direction, performance feedback and clear development pathways.  Ensuring all engineering activity aligns with data governance, including metadata standards, data quality, security and privacy requirements.  Acting as a subject‑matter expert on data engineering, advising the wider business on platform capabilities, constraints, best practices and emerging technologies.  Supporting vendor technical reviews, ensuring external engineering adheres to Seasalt’s architecture, coding and quality requirements.  Contributing to the long‑term data platform strategy.    The skills you’ll be sharing with the team  Bachelor’s degree in a relevant technical discipline (e.g., Computer Science, Data Engineering, Software Engineering, Information Systems, Mathematics/Statistics) or equivalent professional experience, with strong grounding in programming, data, and cloud technologies.  Proven leadership of data engineering workstreams delivering enterprise-grade pipelines and analytics-ready data models at scale.  End-to-end Azure data platform build experience (e.g., ADF, Microsoft Fabric, Databricks, Synapse/SQL), with demonstrated reliability, performance tuning, and cost optimisation.  Strong pattern-driven engineering capability, including the design and adoption of reusable standards across coding, CI/CD, testing, and observability.  Advanced data modelling expertise across lakehouse/medallion layers and dimensional (star/snowflake) approaches, producing trusted, high-quality datasets.  Clear ownership of production data services, accountable for stability, timely refreshes and root cause resolution in alongside service and operations teams.  Excellent stakeholder, vendor, and cross-functional collaboration skills (both internally and externally), translating business needs into well-sequenced engineering delivery and holding partners to agreed technical standards and SLAs.  Strong communicator and influencer, able to clearly explain complex technical concepts, guide decision-making and manage stakeholders at all levels.  Demonstrated mentoring and coaching capability, providing hands-on technical leadership, code reviews, design guidance, and skills uplift within teams.  Highly organised, resilient, and accountable, able to balance BAU stability with delivery deadlines, make sound trade-offs under pressure, and own outcomes end to end.    Why we hope you’ll love working with us:   The success of Seasalt is down to the skill and hard work of our team. We don't just want to attract the best and brightest people to come and work with us, we want you to stay and grow with us.    As well as doing everything we can to support your development professionally, we believe encouraging personal growth is just as important. So you can fulfil your passion and purpose, not just at work but in life, we offer a range of benefits that are designed to enhance your career and wellbeing:     34 days paid annual leave (including bank holidays), increasing with length of service    Attractive 50% employee discount     Flexible benefits allowance to personalise your benefits package    Private Medical Scheme including 24/7 virtual GP    Free access to our Employee Assistance Programme through Retail Trust with 24/7 support     Pension plan with generous 7% employer contributions    Life assurance programme     Enhanced family leave policies    Flexible working opportunities with our hybrid working approach    Learning and Development opportunities   Do Good Things with our two days per year paid volunteering opportunities   Employee networks to develop and provide support to our people, including the Inclusion & Belonging Network   100s of savings on top retailers and gym memberships through our discount hub       At Seasalt we have a brilliant team of people – they're what make Seasalt a fantastic place to work. We love to celebrate uniqueness and are committed to making Seasalt a place where everyone feels they belong. As an inclusive employer, we want to invite a diverse range of candidates to apply for our roles.    We aim to work flexibly where possible and value a range of perspectives - diversity of thought helps us to grow – so please apply if this is a role that would make you excited to come to work every day. We're happy to help with any adjustments to our recruitment process and beyond. Just drop us an email at careers@seasaltcornwall.co.uk      Closing date for applications is 17th June, however our roles can close earlier so we would recommend applying as soon as you are able.    IND-754