Staff Data Engineer Contract Up to &1,300/day Inside IR35
Summary
6-month contract (inside IR35, up to £1,300/day, hybrid London) for a Staff-level Data Engineer modernising a major UK financial services firm's data estate: hands-on Python/PySpark/Spark pipeline migration on AWS Glue and Airflow, plus Staff-level technical leadership and championing AI-assisted engineering practices.
Staff Data Engineer Contract Up to £1,300/day Inside IR35
Location: Hybrid - London (3 days per week on-site)
Rate: Up to £1,300/day
Contract: Initial 6 months
IR35: Inside IR35
We're supporting a major UK financial services organisation through a significant programme of data engineering modernisation and transformation.
We're looking for a genuinely Staff-level Data Engineer who combines deep hands-on engineering capability with the technical leadership to challenge existing approaches, shape solutions and raise engineering standards across multiple teams.
This is not a hands-off architecture role. You'll be expected to shape the thinking, design the solution and get into the code to prove and deliver it.
The role
You'll work across a major modernisation of the organisation's data estate, including the transformation and migration of large-scale data pipelines, development of new data products and adoption of modern, AI-assisted engineering practices.
Responsibilities will include:
- Providing Staff-level technical leadership across complex data engineering initiatives
- Remaining deeply hands-on with Python, PySpark and Spark
- Modernising and migrating large-scale data pipelines across AWS
- Designing and challenging approaches across AWS Glue, Airflow and associated technologies
- Shaping scalable data architectures, frameworks and engineering patterns
- Supporting the development of new data products and reusable capabilities
- Championing AI-assisted development to improve engineering quality and delivery speed
- Raising engineering standards and capability across multiple teams
What we’re looking for
- Deep hands-on Python/PySpark and Apache Spark expertise
- Strong AWS data engineering, particularly AWS Glue
- Strong Apache Airflow experience
- Experience delivering complex data transformation or modernisation programmes
- Strong software engineering fundamentals
- Experience operating at Staff, Principal or Senior Lead Engineer level
- Ability to independently challenge thinking and shape technical solutions
- Genuine desire to remain hands-on with code
- Experience incorporating AI-assisted development tools into engineering workflows
- Snowflake experience would be beneficial
The sweet spot is someone who can operate across both technical strategy and hands-on delivery - setting the engineering direction while still being capable of building and proving the solution.