Lead Data Engineer

As a Lead Engineer – Data, you will set the technical direction for OakNorth’s Data function. This is a pivotal leadership role embedded within the Data & Analytics function, shaping our approach to scalable data systems, modern engineering practices, and cross-functional collaboration. You’ll partner closely with the Technical Product Manager to translate strategic priorities into data products that empower lending, finance, analytics, and risk teams across the business.

You will:

• Lead a squad of 4-6 Engineers.
• Define and lead the technical strategy for the Data Platform and internal data products
• Guide architectural decisions and system design for robust, scalable, and secure data infrastructure
• Collaborate closely with stakeholders to deliver impactful solutions
• Drive technical excellence and standardisation across data practices
• Mentor and coach engineers across the data function, creating a culture of growth and innovation
• Work across the full stack when needed, with a primary focus on data systems, orchestration, transformation, and cloud infrastructure
• Embrace DevOps and continuous delivery – you build it, you run it
• Lead by example, coding when required while delegating effectively

What You’ll Be Working On ⛏️

• You’ll lead initiatives such as:
• Designing and implementing scalable data pipelines and data models (e.g., in DBT + BigQuery)
• Building a reliable, observable, and automated data platform using modern tools and cloud-native services
• Collaborating with the TPM and stakeholders to prioritise initiatives that drive business value
• Enhancing governance, lineage, quality monitoring, and security of our data ecosystem
• Enabling self-serve data capabilities for analytics and product teams

You May Be a Good Fit If You 🎯

• Have 7+ years of experience in data engineering or backend systems, and at least 2+ years in a leadership or technical decision-making role
• Are deeply experienced with modern data stacks (e.g. DBT, BigQuery, Airflow, Terraform, GCP/AWS)
• Have strong software engineering foundations (Python, SQL, DevOps practices, CI/CD)
• Understand data warehousing, ETL/ELT, orchestration, and real-time/streaming data flows
• Are outcome-focused: you define success by the business impact you enable
• Value simplicity, reliability, and automation
• Enjoy collaborating across disciplines and bring excellent communication skills
• Care about mentoring others and elevating the standards of your team
• Are energised by cross-functional product squads and greenfield opportunities

How We Work 🧭

• We expect you to work in these ways, as well as encouraging and enabling these practices from others:
• Collaborate 💬 - We work in cross-functional, mission driven, autonomous squads that gel over time. We pair program to work better through shared experience and knowledge.
• Focus on outcomes over outputs ✅ - Solving a problem for users that translates to business results is our goal. Measurements focused on that goal help us to understand if we are succeeding.
• Practice continuous improvement💡 - We optimise for feedback now, rather than presume what might be needed in the future and introduce complexity before it will be used. This means we learn faster. We share learnings in blame-free formats, so that we do not repeat things that have failed, but still have confidence to innovate.
• Seek to understand our users👂 - We constantly seek understanding from data and conversations to better serve our users' needs, taking an active part in research to hear from them directly and regularly.
• Embrace and enable continuous deployment 🤖 - Seamless delivery of changes into an environment - without manual intervention - is essential for us to ensure that we are highly productive; consider resiliency; and practice security by design.
• Test outside-in, test first🚦 - TDD keeps us confident in moving fast and deploying regularly. We want to solve user problems, and so we test with that mindset - writing scenarios first, then considering our solution; coupling tests to behaviour, rather than implementation.
• You build it, you run it ⚙️ - We embrace DevOps culture and end-to-end ownership of products and features. Every engineer, regardless of their role, can lead delivery of features from start to finish.
• Be cloud native ☁️ - We leverage automation and hosted services to deliver resilient, secure services quickly and consistently.

Company Benefits

• Work-life balance 🌴- 25 days holiday (plus bank holidays) each year, and enhanced family leave allowances.
• Competitive salary & equity 🏦- We want people to have a serious stake in the business.
• Good kit 💻- A brand new MacBook Pro and £200 towards whatever keyboard/mouse you want
• Team socials 🎉- The opportunity to get to know each other outside of work.
• Company socials 🥡- A chance to catch up and meet new colleagues weekly over informal office breakfasts and dinners on OakNorth - or at our free barista bar every day.
• Commuter support 🚲- We offer the cycle to work scheme.

Interview Process

• Recruiter call (30 minutes)
• Hiring manager interview (30 minutes)
• 2x technical interviews (60 minutes each)
• Culture-fit interview (60 minutes)
• Offer