Head of Data Engineering
Manchester, Greater Manchester, North West, England
£100000 - £125000 per annum
Manchester, Greater Manchester, North West, England
PermanentTech
Head of Data Engineering
Head of Data Engineering
Location: Manchester (hybrid – 3 days a week in office)
Salary: £125,000 base bonus and benefits
Type: Permanent, full-time
The opportunity
Our client, a well-known international consumer brand, is undertaking a major data modernisation programme and is looking for a Head of Data Engineering to own it end-to-end. The programme is replatforming the data and reporting estate onto Snowflake, dbt, Fivetran and a modern Azure-based integration stack, while retiring legacy SQL Server warehouses. The pace is fast, the scope spans multiple international markets, and this is a highly visible, board-level programme.
This is a hands-on, accountable leadership role for someone who has personally led a comparable migration before and is willing to be in the code and in the incident room alongside the team.
What you'll be doing
Essential
Location: Manchester (hybrid – 3 days a week in office)
Salary: £125,000 base bonus and benefits
Type: Permanent, full-time
The opportunity
Our client, a well-known international consumer brand, is undertaking a major data modernisation programme and is looking for a Head of Data Engineering to own it end-to-end. The programme is replatforming the data and reporting estate onto Snowflake, dbt, Fivetran and a modern Azure-based integration stack, while retiring legacy SQL Server warehouses. The pace is fast, the scope spans multiple international markets, and this is a highly visible, board-level programme.
This is a hands-on, accountable leadership role for someone who has personally led a comparable migration before and is willing to be in the code and in the incident room alongside the team.
What you'll be doing
- Owning the design, build and operation of the data engineering estate – Snowflake, dbt, Fivetran, Azure integration services – and the migration off legacy SQL Server warehouses.
- Leading the engineering workstream of a fixed-milestone modernisation programme.
- Recruiting, managing and mentoring a team including a Delivery Lead, Senior Data Engineers and QA/Test Engineers.
- Setting engineering standards: testing, code review, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, change control.
- Owning the on-call and incident model, acting as senior escalation point including out-of-hours during critical periods.
- Owning platform health, performance, security and cost across multiple markets.
- Managing the controlled decommissioning of legacy warehouses, including reconciliation and cutover.
- Reporting progress and risk clearly to senior leadership.
Essential
- 8 years' data engineering experience, including 3 years leading engineering teams of 5 people through delivery.
- Recent, hands-on experience leading a large data platform migration on a short timeline.
- Deep, current technical credibility across Snowflake, dbt, Fivetran (or equivalent) and SQL.
- Strong working knowledge of Azure data services.
- Experience running a production-grade engineering SDLC and owning incident response.
- Track record of delivering to fixed senior-stakeholder milestones in a fast-moving environment, with flexibility for evenings/weekends when needed.
- Right to work in the UK without sponsorship.
- SnowPro Advanced or equivalent certification.
- Experience across multiple geographic markets.
- Experience integrating major enterprise SaaS systems.
- Exposure to data governance, lineage and cataloguing tooling.
- £125,000 base, plus bonus.
- Private medical, pension and life assurance.
- Hybrid working from Manchester.
- Genuine ownership of a flagship, board-visible modernisation programme.