Data Engineer
Summary
Data Engineer at PLS Solicitors, a conveyancing law firm in Altrincham building an internal AI centre of excellence. The role owns end-to-end production data pipelines, replaces a legacy stored-procedure warehouse with modern Azure pipelines, and builds datasets for AI/RAG work. Core stack: SQL, Python, Azure, Databricks/PySpark.
Salary: £57,000 - 67,000 per year
Requirements:- We are looking for around 4-6+ years of genuine hands-on Data Engineering experience, with a focus on what you have owned and delivered.
- Strong SQL skills, including complex queries, performance tuning, data modelling and stored procedures, with an understanding of the impact of querying production systems.
- Python experience for data pipeline and automation work.
- Experience owning production data pipelines end-to-end, including building, monitoring and fixing them when needed.
- Experience working with SQL Server, Azure SQL or similar production database environments.
- A strong sense of ownership and accountability for data pipelines and data integrity issues.
- Comfortable working with ambiguity and taking ownership of loosely defined problems.
- Strong communication skills and confidence working with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- An understanding of security, data quality and responsible handling of confidential information.
- Experience with cloud data technologies; Azure experience would be beneficial, though transferable experience from other cloud platforms is also welcome.
- Progress OpenEdge experience.
- Databricks, Spark or PySpark experience.
- Experience feeding data into AI systems, including RAG pipelines, vector stores, embedding workflows, or using Azure AI Foundry or similar AI/data platforms.
- Experience with event-driven pipelines and Azure Service Bus or similar messaging technologies.
- Experience within legal, professional services or another regulated environment.
- Experience using AI-assisted development tools such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot or similar.
- Deliver our data strategy by building the pipelines and platforms it defines, and supporting and refining it as our estate evolves.
- Design least-privilege, read-only access patterns and query workloads that do not put load on the live production system.
- Build and maintain the datasets our AI work depends on, including turning our golden dataset of completed matters into a versioned, access-controlled, anonymised and repeatable pipeline, along with evaluation data.
- Replace a legacy management information warehouse built on stored procedures with modern, documented pipelines and reporting that is trusted across the business.
- Support the data needs of new platform builds and integrations as our legacy estate is replaced.
- Monitor data quality, lineage, retention and pseudonymisation to a standard suitable for a regulated firm handling sensitive client data.
- Maintain documentation so pipelines and datasets are well understood and can be built upon by others.
- Stay current with data engineering tooling and practice, identifying opportunities to improve how we manage and move data.
- AI
- Azure
- Claude Code
- Cloud
- Copilot
- Databricks
- GitHub
- Support
- Progress OpenEdge
- Python
- PySpark
- RAG
- SQL
- Security
- Spark
- Data Warehouse
More:
We are PLS Solicitors, a well-established and growing law firm with a strong reputation in conveyancing and ongoing investment in technology, AI and platform modernisation. This newly created Data Engineer role is based in Altrincham, WA14 5UW on a hybrid basis, with a minimum of 2 days per week in the office after onboarding, working full-time Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 17:00. We are building an internal AI centre of excellence and re-architecting parts of our technology estate towards a modern Azure platform, and this role will own the data foundation behind our AI, reporting and future technology platforms. You will report to our Head of Development and work closely with our AI Developer and wider technology team. We offer genuine ownership, a visible impact on real data problems, a modern and collaborative environment with strong backing from our CEO and COO, long-term development opportunities including study support options after 12 months, 25 days annual leave plus Bank Holidays with buy/carry over options, and employee benefits including death in service, healthcare plan, EAP, counselling, salary sacrifice, company events, company pension, employee discount, free parking, on-site parking and a referral programme.
last updated 39 week of 2026