Lead Data Engineer

We are seeking a strategic and hands-on Lead Data Engineer to own the development of Aerial Direct’s cloud-native data platform. Working primarily within the Microsoft Azure ecosystem, you will be responsible for building and maintaining scalable data pipelines, optimising architecture for performance, and enabling actionable insights across the business.
In addition to technical delivery, you will lead a small team of data engineers and analysts, helping to embed best practices, mentor talent, and deliver enterprise-grade data services that power automation, reporting, and transformation initiatives.
You will play a central role in shaping how data is stored, governed, and consumed across the business, ensuring security, scalability, and compliance are built in by design.
What do we offer?
Holiday rising with each year of service
Buy & Sell Holiday Scheme
Your Birthday Off - after all it's the most important day of the year!
23 Days Annual Leave + Bank Holidays
Free eye tests & support towards glasses
Discounted Home Broadband
Family & Friends Broadband Referral Scheme
Our Employee Assistance Programme offering confidential Wellbeing Support
Regular events and activities throughout the year including our famous Christmas Party, summer party & Employee Awards!
Company pension scheme
You’ll get involved in:
Data Strategy, Architecture & Engineering
Owning and evolving Aerial Direct’s Azure-based data platform, ensuring performance, security, and scalability.
Design, management, and optimisation of data warehouse and data lake schemas to support downstream analytics, dashboards, and operational processes.
Leading development and optimisation of ETL/ELT pipelines using Azure Data Factory, including data ingress/egress processes (Batch files, SFTP, API etc).
Ensuring all data assets are structured to reflect business logic and enable consistent, reusable reporting.
Establishing best practices for data ingestion, transformation, storage, and quality across systems (CRM, billing, contact centre, provisioning).
Ownership of strategy and delivery of self-service and operational reporting across the business.
Partnering with wider business to build and maintain dashboards, reports, and KPIs that drive decision-making.
Ensuring data definitions and metrics are consistent and aligned across functions.
Continuous review and improvement of data models to support evolving business questions and performance monitoring.
Support of the delivery of real-time and predictive reporting as part of the wider transformation roadmap.
Leadership & Governance
Leadership, mentoring, and development of a small team of data engineers and analysts.
Promote engineering and analytical best practices, including code management, documentation, and testing.
Champion data governance, security, and compliance in line with GDPR, Ofcom, and internal security standards.
Driving adoption of CI/CD practices, version control, and DevOps for data workflows.
Act as the key point of contact for all data platform and reporting-related issues, escalations, and opportunities.
Collaboration with IT, product, and transformation leadership to ensure alignment between data capability and strategic priorities.
Ideally, you’ll have:
Proven experience in a Senior or Lead Data Engineering role, with responsibility for data architecture, reporting platforms, and technical team leadership.
Extensive hands-on experience with the Microsoft Azure data stack, including Azure Data Factory, Synapse Analytics, Azure SQL DB, Data Lake, Azure Storage, Key Vault, and Databricks.
Demonstrated ability to optimise and extend data warehouse and data lake schemas, collaborating with stakeholders to design scalable, performant ETL/ELT pipelines.
Strong proficiency in SQL and Python, with experience using modern data transformation frameworks such as ADF.
Experience working with structured and semi-structured data (e.g. JSON, Parquet, CSV, API sources).
Proven ability to design and deliver reporting solutions using Power BI or equivalent tools, with a sound understanding of semantic modelling and KPI frameworks.
Familiarity with source control, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure automation tools such as Azure DevOps and Terraform.
Strong knowledge of data governance, privacy, and compliance standards, particularly in UK-regulated industries such as telecoms (e.g. GDPR, Ofcom).
Experience mentoring and managing technical team members, assigning tasks, conducting code reviews, and embedding best practices.
It would be great if you have:
Experience working with Microsoft Fabric, Dynamics 365 data structures, telecom billing platforms, or customer interaction systems such as ConnexOne.
Who are we?
We exist to enable our customers to have the conversations that matter. We do this through effective partnerships and a great customer experience. Working at Aerial Direct isn’t just a career, it’s a decision to be better. It’s choosing to take on interesting work that challenges you. We can promise that your hard work will be rewarded and recognised, and you’ll be given the tools, training, and support needed to do a great job.
We are proud to be one of the UK’s leading independent providers of telecommunications. We are equally as proud of our employees who have helped us become one of the largest O2 partners in the UK.
Our Process
Step 1: Is there a fit? You’ll have a chat with our Talent Acquisition team, talk through your past experiences and what it is you’re looking for from your career
Step 2: M eeting with your would-be manager, our Head of BI & Data, to talk through the role in greater detail.
Step 3: You’ll meet with the team to talk through your technical knowledge, with a short technical test to gauge your knowledge levels .
Step 4: If it looks like a good fit from both sides, we’ll be looking to make you an offer!
Our Values:
All: We are one team enabling each other and the business to thrive
Elite: We will be the very best that we can be for our customers and our colleagues
Respectful: We show respect for our environment, our people and above all else, our customers
Impeccable: We will deliver the best customer experience and service in all we do
Agile: We’re always looking to be one step ahead, quick to move, and to anticipate our customers’ needs
Limitless: We seek continuous improvement in order to grow and develop the business

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