Lead Data Engineer

Lead Data Engineer, based in Waltham Abbey (Hybrid role). Salary £60-80k p.a. + many benefits. This is a newly created role to lead a team and be hands on in replacing old tech systems and creating ETL pipelines. We’re a small high-impact team but Jollyes is growing.

This is a full-time, hybrid role involving a minimum of 3 office days per week at our pet-friendly support office in Waltham Abbey (Essex) and up to 2 days per week from home (or other Jollyes location as preferred). 37.5 hours per week.

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• Backend Development: Design, build, and maintain serverless and traditional backend architectures using best practices. (We build on AWS using Lambdas and ECS images – largely in NodeJS.)
  
• ETL Pipeline Management: Develop and optimise data pipelines to enable seamless data flow and transformation. (We currently use a mix of SSIS, ETL Works, Airflow, Snowflake and are moving to Airflow/Snowflake only architecture.)
  
• Snowflake Management: Create production-ready procedures in Snowflake for moving and analysing data.
  
• System Optimisation: Improve existing backend systems for enhanced performance, scalability, and reliability. (We’re migrating away from an old ERP monolith to a SAAS architecture and new systems arrive for different teams across the business.)
  
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Work with teams across finance, marketing, and supply chain to support data needs and align technical solutions with business objectives.
  
• Technical Leadership: Provide guidance on architecture decisions, ensuring solutions are aligned with long-term technical goals and day-to-day team leadership.
  
• Data Governance & Security: Ensure compliance with GDPR, data retention policies, and Jollyes’ information security standards.
  
• Documentation & Standards: Establish best practices for coding, version control, and deployment across the data stack. (Currently, we use Bitbucket, but have poor documentation.)
  

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• Proficiency: SQL and Python with experience with ETL workflows.
  
• Cloud: Experience with cloud-based data environments (AWS: S3, Lambda, ECS).
  
• Education: Bachelor’s degree or equivalent qualification or equivalent experience in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, or a related field.
  
• Communication: Effective written and verbal communication, with attention to detail and technically opinionated.
  
• Problem-Solving: Curious and action-orientated; driven to make data useful.
  
• Decision-Making: Comfortable making decisions and implementing new solutions.
  
• Data Sensitivity: Can handle sensitive and confidential information.
  
• : Experience working with non-data stakeholders to translate their needs into useful results presented clearly.
  
• Orchestration & Modelling: Familiarity with orchestration tools (Airflow, DBT) and data warehouse modelling.
  
• Leadership: Experience managing other data engineers.
  
• Industry Experience: Experience with customer and commercial datasets, especially in retail or FMCG.
  
• Interest in Pets: A love of pets!
  

Jollyes are an award-winning UK pet retailer with over 100 stores and over 50 years of pet expertise. Winners of the Retail Week award for ‘Best Retailer 2024’ (under £250m t/o), and listed in the Sunday Times ‘Best Places to Work’. Accredited by 'Rest Less' as an age-inclusive employer, welcoming applications of all ages (16+), and with accreditation to the Pet Sustainability Coalition, we are friendly to pets, people, and the planet.

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• Competitive salary of £60-80k p.a. (depending on level of experience).
  
• iTrent financial wellbeing package, powered by Stream, enabling access to earnings before pay day plus discounts and savings benefits.
  
• Retail Trust membership – counselling, wellbeing and financial support for the retail industry.
  
• Colleague ‘Treats’ – discounts on up to 800 high street retailers and online service providers.
  
• Colleague ‘We Care’ wellbeing & medical support services – online GP, mental health support, get fit programme and more.
  
• Discounts: 30% off Jollyes branded products (and 20% off other brands in store).
  
• Workplace pension scheme provided by Legal & General (contributions EE 3%, ER 5%).
  
• Additional paid leave for wedding, new pet arrival, and birthday.
  
• Enhanced Maternity & Paternity leave and family-friendly policies.
  
• Buy/Sell holiday scheme – purchase or sell up to 5 days.
  
• Discounted membership for David Lloyd Clubs.
  
• Probationary period: further benefits including enhanced pension and PMI.