Head of Data Engineering

MAG (Airports Group)
Manchester
1 month ago
Create job alert

Select how often (in days) to receive an alert:


For airports, for partners, for people. We are CAVU.


At CAVU, our purpose is to find new and better ways to make airport travel seamless and enjoyable for everybody—from the smallest ideas to the biggest transformations. Every day is an opportunity to create better travel experiences.


From our revenue-accelerating single-platform technology, Propel, through to our world-class hospitality venues including 1903 and Escape Lounges, our solutions make travel smoother for passengers and more profitable for our clients and partners.


We know that to bring your best ideas, you need the space to think, the support to grow, and the freedom to be your authentic self. Whether you’re working from our offices, from home, in our lounges, or on the road, we provide an environment where you can create, innovate, and help transform airport travel.


If you’re looking for a career where you can make a real impact, bring new ideas to life, and push boundaries, then CAVU is the place for you.


Together, we can reach new heights. Together, we are CAVU.


What’s the role?

CAVU is well into an exciting digital and data transformation journey. With the acquisition of new brands, the expansion of our product portfolio, and a commitment to best-in-class technology, data has become fundamental to how we operate and grow.


As we progress towards a fully event-based architecture with data quality at the heart of everything we do, we’re now looking for a Head of Data Engineering to join our Data leadership team.


This role will shape, strengthen, and scale our centralised data engineering function—ensuring our platforms, pipelines, and architecture are robust, forward-thinking, and fit for the future. You’ll bring deep expertise across modern data engineering practices, strong technical solution-design capability (particularly with Databricks), and the leadership to empower a high-performing engineering team.


Key Responsibilities

  • Team Leadership: Lead, manage and mentor a team of data engineers, fostering a culture of collaboration, learning, and innovation.
  • Strategic Ownership: Develop and execute the data engineering strategy, ensuring alignment with business objectives and long-term data ambitions.
  • Data Architecture: Design, oversee, and continually improve CAVU’s data storage, processing, and integration architecture.
  • Pipeline Excellence: Ensure the delivery of scalable, high-quality data pipelines for ingestion, transformation and storage.
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with data science, analytics, product, and engineering teams to ensure data is accessible, discoverable, and meets CAVU standards.
  • Data Quality & Governance: Establish and champion best practices for data quality, governance, observability, and security.
  • Technology Evaluation: Stay ahead of data engineering trends and evaluate emerging tools to enhance the team’s capabilities.
  • Budget & Resource Management: Own the data engineering budget and ensure efficient use of infrastructure and resources.
  • Stakeholder Management: Anticipate issues, remove blockers, and communicate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

About You

You’re a strategic and hands-on data leader with a passion for building scalable systems, high-performing teams, and exceptional data products. You’re motivated by solving complex problems, enabling others to thrive, and shaping the future of data at CAVU.


Qualifications & Experience

  • Strong experience with medallion architecture and Databricks
  • Proficiency with ETL tools (e.g., Rivery) and ML-Ops frameworks
  • Strong programming skills (Python, Scala or Java)
  • Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
  • Excellent communication skills with the ability to bring clarity to complexity
  • Proven ability to anticipate problems and resolve them with ease

Preferred

  • Experience working in a SaaS environment
  • Exposure to machine learning and AI tooling

The Perks

  • 25 days holiday, increasing with service (up to 28)
  • Option to buy up to 10 extra days + 4 flexible bank holidays
  • 10% company pension
  • On-site gym
  • A range of flexible benefits and discounts, including up to 50% off CAVU products such as Escape Lounges and Airport Parking
  • Rail and retail discounts
  • 2 paid volunteering days per year
  • Access to health & wellbeing events, ID&E activities, and learning opportunities
  • Formal and informal development options, including mentoring programmes and learning grants
  • Enhanced parental leave (T&Cs apply)

The Interview Process

  • Recruiter Screen (approx. 15 minutes) – We’ll cover your experience, motivations, and role fit
  • Skills & Competency Interview
  • Values Interview

Equal Opportunities & Reasonable Adjustments

We’re building something brilliant at CAVU: a diverse team of People who reflect the global customer base that we serve. We’re proudly part of MAG and together we’re on a mission to be number one in our industries, and that takes talent in all its forms. With so many exciting roles across businesses, there’s space of your unique strengths to shine.


Whether this is your first role or your next big step, we want to hear from you – even if you don’t think you tick every box. What matters most is what you bring.


We’re proud to be a Disability Confident employer. If you need any adjustments to support your application or interview, just let us know. We’re committed to helping you perform at your best.


At MAG and CAVU, every journey matters. Our Colleague Communities play a big part in that: Women’s Network, Embrace (Race & Ethnicity), Fly with Pride (LGBTQIA+), Mind Matters (Mental Health), PACT (Parents & Carers), RespectABILITY (Disability & Neurodiversity), and the CAVU Global ID&E Affinity Group.


#J-18808-Ljbffr

Related Jobs

View all jobs

Head of Data Engineering

Head of Data Engineering — Scale Data Platforms & Teams

Head of Data Engineering (Manchester/Hybrid, UK)

Head of Data Engineering (Manchester/Hybrid, UK)

Head of Data Engineering & Data Strategy

Head of Data Engineering

Subscribe to Future Tech Insights for the latest jobs & insights, direct to your inbox.

By subscribing, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of service.

Industry Insights

Discover insightful articles, industry insights, expert tips, and curated resources.

Machine Learning Jobs for Career Switchers in Their 30s, 40s & 50s (UK Reality Check)

Are you considering a career change into machine learning in your 30s, 40s or 50s? You’re not alone. In the UK, organisations across industries such as finance, healthcare, retail, government & technology are investing in machine learning to improve decisions, automate processes & unlock new insights. But with all the hype, it can be hard to tell which roles are real job opportunities and which are just buzzwords. This article gives you a practical, UK-focused reality check: which machine learning roles truly exist, what skills employers really hire for, how long retraining realistically takes, how to position your experience and whether age matters in your favour or not. Whether you come from analytics, engineering, operations, research, compliance or business strategy, there is a credible route into machine learning if you approach it strategically.

How to Write a Machine Learning Job Ad That Attracts the Right People

Machine learning now sits at the heart of many UK organisations, powering everything from recommendation engines and fraud detection to forecasting, automation and decision support. As adoption grows, so does demand for skilled machine learning professionals. Yet many employers struggle to attract the right candidates. Machine learning job adverts often generate high volumes of applications, but few applicants have the blend of modelling skill, engineering awareness and real-world experience the role actually requires. Meanwhile, strong machine learning engineers and scientists quietly avoid adverts that feel vague, inflated or confused. In most cases, the issue is not the talent market — it is the job advert itself. Machine learning professionals are analytical, technically rigorous and highly selective. A poorly written job ad signals unclear expectations and low ML maturity. A well-written one signals credibility, focus and a serious approach to applied machine learning. This guide explains how to write a machine learning job ad that attracts the right people, improves applicant quality and strengthens your employer brand.

Maths for Machine Learning Jobs: The Only Topics You Actually Need (& How to Learn Them)

Machine learning job adverts in the UK love vague phrases like “strong maths” or “solid fundamentals”. That can make the whole field feel gatekept especially if you are a career changer or a student who has not touched maths since A level. Here is the practical truth. For most roles on MachineLearningJobs.co.uk such as Machine Learning Engineer, Applied Scientist, Data Scientist, NLP Engineer, Computer Vision Engineer or MLOps Engineer with modelling responsibilities the maths you actually use is concentrated in four areas: Linear algebra essentials (vectors, matrices, projections, PCA intuition) Probability & statistics (uncertainty, metrics, sampling, base rates) Calculus essentials (derivatives, chain rule, gradients, backprop intuition) Basic optimisation (loss functions, gradient descent, regularisation, tuning) If you can do those four things well you can build models, debug training, evaluate properly, explain trade-offs & sound credible in interviews. This guide gives you a clear scope plus a six-week learning plan, portfolio projects & resources so you can learn with momentum rather than drowning in theory.