Principal Data Engineer

About Our Data & ML Team

Data & AI powers our growth and innovation. We build enterprise platforms to create actionable insight enabling colleagues to make effective decisions and create proactive, automated, hyper-personalised experiences for our customers.

We have a growing data and AI team in the UK and Netherlands. We function as the backbone for a variety of data-hungry consumers and platforms across the business within Marketing, Finance, Operations and Product teams. Our AI photo services are at the heart of our consumer experience and we’re expanding our footprint towards decentralised ML adoption within the business.

As a team, we have come together through mergers. We are at the end of a phase of simplification of legacy infrastructure and moving into the next phase of consolidation and growth.

Who We’re Looking For

We are looking for an experienced Principal Data Engineer to join our London-based data team and help us (re-)build a platform that accelerates a decentralised-by-design data adoption model within the business. We care about providing trustable, usable data that meets business needs. We want you to own and drive technical excellence within your team to make this organisation-level change happen.

You’re a software engineering technical leader at heart. You thrive in the data engineering and analytics engineering domain. You care deeply about customer outcome-focused data engineering excellence.

Areas of Expertise

Technical Leadership

• Extensive experience in data engineering, including designing, building, and maintaining robust and scalable data platforms that enable key business initiatives.
• Proven ability to lead technical design and architecture discussions, influencing technical strategy and decisions across the organization.
• Experience mentoring and coaching junior engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence within the team.

Data Engineering Expertise

• Deep understanding of data engineering principles and best practices, including data modeling, observable ETL/ELT processes, data warehousing, and data governance.
• Proficiency in data manipulation languages (e.g., SQL/DBT) and programming languages relevant to data engineering (e.g., Python).
• Experience with a variety of data processing frameworks and technologies, including cloud-based data services.

Software Engineering Practices

• Experience with software development lifecycle (SDLC) best practices, including version control (e.g., Git), testing, and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD).
• A focus on building high-quality, maintainable, and well-documented code.

Collaboration And Communication

• Exceptional communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to effectively communicate technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Proven ability to work effectively in a cross-functional team environment, collaborating with product managers, analysts, and other stakeholders.
• Proven effective influencer, capable of driving change outside of your direct team, contributing to the wider engineering community.

Education

• A degree in a STEM field (e.g., Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics) or equivalent practical experience.

Your Daily Adventure at Storio

• Collaborate effectively within a cross-functional, mission-led team, led by a product manager and engineering manager, contributing to the team’s strategy, roadmap, and OKRs.
• Define and champion technical principles and practices to raise the bar on implementing a well-engineered, well-governed data platform that meets the needs of our customers.
• Be accountable for the technical health of your team’s codebase, driving continuous improvement and establishing metrics to track progress.
• Lead technical solution design on multiple complex initiatives within your team, demonstrated by successful and timely implementation, driving resolutions for complex and difficult problems.
• Drive continuous improvement on key metrics such as business value, cost efficiency, speed, and quality of delivery.
• Coach a team of data and analytics engineers on best practices in the software development lifecycle, delivering high-quality software through your own work, and fostering a feedback culture within the team.
• Influence key decision-making across the data and ML engineering domain on technical approaches to balance delivering near-term commercial impact and building long-term foundations.

Our Tech Stack

• Cloud Data Warehouse - Snowflake
• AWS Data Solutions - Kinesis, SNS, SQS, S3, ECS, Lambda
• Data Governance & Quality - Collate & Monte Carlo
• Infrastructure as Code - Terraform
• Data Integration & Transformation - Python, DBT, Fivetran, Airflow
• CI/CD - Github Actions / Jenkins

Nice To Have Experience

• Understanding of various data architecture paradigms (e.g., Data Lakehouse, Data Warehouse, Data Mesh) and their applicability to different business needs.
• Experience with data governance principles and practices, ensuring data quality, accuracy, and compliance.
• Familiarity with data security best practices and technologies.
• Experience in the e-commerce domain.

About Us

We are Storio group, a place where life’s stories are made, crafted and shared. A place where we create new ways to pass memories and stories between people and generations. And where, together, we make joy unforgettable. We bring our customers’ stories to life through a range of high-quality personalised photo products, like photo books, wall decor, calendars & gifts. Our innovative technology enables customers to easily personalise their creations to keep for themselves or share as the most thoughtful of gifts.

Every single one of our employees brings something unique to Storio group and leaves a lasting imprint on our work, our culture and our company. Storio group is a place where we can all see and feel the impact of what we do, every day. A career with us is an opportunity to make your mark on our customers’ lives and on your career.

Our Values Shape Everything We Do, From Our Interactions With Customers And Colleagues To The Way We Approach Our Work. We Believe In Fostering An Environment Where Everyone Can Thrive And Contribute To Our Shared Success. At Storio Group, We

Act with heart: People - both customers and employees - are at the heart of all we do. So we embrace diversity and get to know each other as real people and build real relationships based on mutual understanding and respect.

Give our best: As the crafters and makers of people’s memories, we play an important role in our customers’ lives. That’s why we give our best and work together to make the right decisions and build a better business every day.

Own all we do: We are all, as individuals and as a team, responsible for creating our success and shaping our future. We lead the charge and drive things forward - fully owning our actions and decisions along the way.

Embrace curiosity: We believe progress requires curiosity. So, we’re relentlessly curious about the world and each other, actively seeking out diverse perspectives and always asking big questions like ‘why’ and ‘what’s next’?

Find the joy: At Storio, joy matters. We see it as a state of mind, so while we don’t pretend every day will be easy, we do set out every day to intentionally find, create and share big and little moments of joy with our customers and teammates.

Equal opportunities statement

We are committed to promoting equal opportunities in employment regardless of age, disability, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.

If you have a disability or special need that requires reasonable adjustments in order for you to perform at your peak during the interview, please let our HR team know ahead of time so that they can assist. We will consider the matter carefully and try to accommodate your needs within reason. If we consider a particular adjustment would not be reasonable we will explain our reasons and try to find an alternative solution where possible.

Sponsorship

You must have a right to work in the country where the position is located.