Lead Data Engineer (Databricks)
Added 28 Aug · still live
Not disclosed
Salary
Not disclosed by employer
£54,900
Going rate
Skilled Worker going rate
This role likely qualifies for a Skilled Worker visa
SOC 2133 (90% match) is an eligible occupation, with a going rate of £54,900, and United Utilities is a licensed sponsor. That is our reading of the rules. Whether they issue a Certificate of Sponsorship is still their call.
About the role
About Us
Lead Data Engineer (Databricks)
River Water Quality Programme
Warrington (Hybrid – 3 days onsite per week)
At United Utilities, we’re committed to protecting the environment that millions of people depend on every day. As part of our Digital Services team, you’ll play a pivotal role in one of our most important and high-impact initiatives: near real time monitoring of river water quality.
We’re looking for a Lead Data Engineer to take technical ownership of modern, scalable data platforms that turn complex environmental and telemetry data into trusted insights for regulators, scientists, and operational teams.
What You’ll Be Doing
As the Lead Data Engineer on our River Water Quality Programme, you’ll design, build, and optimise Databricks-based data pipelines that enable timely, reliable and well-governed data across the organisation.
You’ll:
Lead Data Engineer (Databricks)
River Water Quality Programme
Warrington (Hybrid – 3 days onsite per week)
At United Utilities, we’re committed to protecting the environment that millions of people depend on every day. As part of our Digital Services team, you’ll play a pivotal role in one of our most important and high-impact initiatives: near real time monitoring of river water quality.
We’re looking for a Lead Data Engineer to take technical ownership of modern, scalable data platforms that turn complex environmental and telemetry data into trusted insights for regulators, scientists, and operational teams.
What You’ll Be Doing
As the Lead Data Engineer on our River Water Quality Programme, you’ll design, build, and optimise Databricks-based data pipelines that enable timely, reliable and well-governed data across the organisation.
You’ll:
- Design and develop scalable batch and streaming data pipelines using Databricks, Spark and Delta Lake
- Implement medallion architecture (bronze/silver/gold) to ensure data quality, lineage and efficient consumption
- Optimise Spark jobs and workflows to meet near real-time monitoring SLAs
- Build and maintain streaming pipelines using Structured Streaming and Delta Live Tables
- Ensure strong data governance, including schema enforcement, validation rules and ACID compliance
- Orchestrate and automate pipelines using Databricks Jobs, APIs or cloud-native schedulers
- Collaborate with data scientists, analysts and environmental specialists to deliver high-quality, well-documented datasets
- Monitor, troubleshoot and continuously improve production pipelines for reliability, performance and cost efficiency
- Champion best practices across CI/CD, testing, version control and documentation
Act as a technical leader and mentor, raising standards across the data engineering community
Essential
What you’ll bring
What You’ll Get
We believe in rewarding our people properly:
Why United Utilities?
You’ll be working on data that truly matters — protecting rivers, supporting environmental compliance, and helping shape the future of sustainable water management across the North West.
If you’re passionate about modern data engineering, enjoy technical leadership, and want your work to have real-world environmental impact, we’d love to hear from you.
Essential
What you’ll bring
- Deep expertise in Databricks (Spark / PySpark, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Workflows)
- Strong experience building ETL/ELT pipelines, both batch and streaming
- Advanced Python and SQL skills
- Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (Azure, AWS or GCP)
- Solid understanding of data modelling and modern architectures
- Strong knowledge of data governance, security and compliance
- Experience with orchestration tools such as Airflow
- Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, Git workflows and automated testing
- Exposure to real-time, IoT or environmental telemetry data
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering or a related discipline
- 5+ years’ experience in data engineering roles, including 3+ years with Databricks
What You’ll Get
We believe in rewarding our people properly:
- Up to 10.5% annual bonus
- Outstanding pension – up to 21% combined contribution
- Private healthcare
- Share buy scheme
- Wellbeing benefits and support programmes
Why United Utilities?
You’ll be working on data that truly matters — protecting rivers, supporting environmental compliance, and helping shape the future of sustainable water management across the North West.
If you’re passionate about modern data engineering, enjoy technical leadership, and want your work to have real-world environmental impact, we’d love to hear from you.
This description is the source posting as it read when we added it. We are not affiliated with United Utilities, so check their own site for the current details.
Where this offer sits in the market
SOC 2133 · UK · ONS ASHE 2025 · ~163k in sampleP25 £46kP75 £82k
£36kmedian £60kgoing rate £55k£100k
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Does this job guarantee visa sponsorship?
Not necessarily. United Utilities holds a sponsor licence, but sponsorship for a specific hire is always the employer's decision. Be upfront in your application that you'll require it.
What salary is needed for this role to be eligible?
The offer must clear both the general threshold and the SOC 2133 going rate of £54,900. New-entrant and shortage discounts can lower it.