Staff Data Engineer

Staff Data Engineer

Your Role: Staff Data Engineer

We’re one of the largest media players in Europe, and data is at the heart of what we do. We capture data from our audio and digital channels, from our extensive outdoor business and beyond, and use this to create the best content for our audiences and an amazing experience for our clients.

The data team supports the whole company across all of these areas, and this scope gives us a rich array of data use cases to work on. These range from personalisation on our digital applications, to optimisation algorithms to allocate our inventory, to data for enabling operational excellence in our outdoor estate, generative technologies to develop ad creatives, and many others.

Three things set us apart:

1. Distinctive problems to solve: As described above, we have some of the most diverse and rich data use cases for any media company. We’re the only player to cut across audio, outdoor, digital, and to run a programmatic ad exchange.

2. Unique data sets: In line with the above, we have some truly unique data sets to work with – and at large scale. This includes our front-end data, data from our ad exchange, outdoor operational data, audio listening data, and much more. It also includes some unique data partnerships: for example, we have access to unique data on travel movements for the TfL network in London.

3. Scale: We’re a privately-owned, mid-cap business, with a long-term perspective. We have the flexibility, pace, and opportunity to work on big problems that an early-stage business would. But equally, we have the scale to make an impact on millions of consumers, and the big data volumes you’d expect of a large business.

We’re looking for a Staff Data Engineer to play a central role in the evolution of our Data Platform and its application for use cases across the company. It is a unique opportunity to continue the work to develop and maintain a robust data infrastructure that supports the organisation’s data-driven initiatives across Global’s multiple data products.

Key Responsibilities

This position requires someone to have a deep understanding of data architecture and engineering best practices, as well as a track record of successfully building data platforms.

1. Technical Leadership (20%): Being highly skilled and possessing deep technical knowledge, you will provide technical leadership and guidance to the engineering team, helping to shape the overall technical direction of projects.

2. Design and architecture (20%): We’re continually looking to evolve our data platform, and to consider application to new use cases – including personalisation, generative AI technology in ad creation, low latency programmatic advertising, and many others. You’ll contribute to the design and architecture of our data platform with a focus on the long term, bringing a strong understanding of software design principles, scalability, and performance considerations.

3. Owning and improving our data infrastructure (20%): You’ll need to go beyond the architectural vision alone and support our work in building our data platform for the future. You’ll be capable of being hands-on and contributing to our delivery.

4. Technical Documentation (10%): Documenting technical designs, system architectures, and coding standards to facilitate knowledge sharing and maintain a high level of technical documentation.

5. Obsessing over quality (10%): You’ll know that “garbage in” can mean “garbage out” in data. We’d expect you to strive for high standards of data quality, and to ensure our platforms are built to a high standard as well. You will drive engineering excellence across the team setting and ensuring adherence to coding standards, best practices, and quality guidelines.

6. Coaching and supporting others (20%): While this is not a people management role, you’ll be a senior technical leader in the team. As such, we’d look for you to coach and guide the engineers who you work closely with.

What You’ll Love About This Role

Think Big: You’ll be at the heart of designing how we evolve our data platform, which will underpin critical business decisions and insights for Global’s future.

Own It: You’ll be doing this by leading technical delivery on some of our most important use cases.

Keep it Simple: We’ve got some of the largest and most diverse data sets in UK media – with scale that continues to grow. You’ll play a leading role in how we enable our platforms to meet this scaling challenge while remaining reliable, maintainable, and cost-effective.

Better Together: You’ll be part of a diverse data team, and have an opportunity to work alongside highly talented engineers, data scientists, and data analysts to deliver our most important business outcomes.

What Success Looks Like

In your first few months, you’ll have:

1. Acquired a deep understanding of our data platform, its architecture, engineering challenges, work methodologies, and the use cases it can support.

2. Fostered an active and collaborative way of working within the team, demonstrating effective leadership and support for others.

3. Learned about use cases for our data platform, and found opportunities to evolve it for the future.

4. Shown passion to research and apply the latest data tools and techniques in the market.

What You’ll Need

The ideal candidate will be proactive and willing to develop and implement innovative solutions, capable of the following:

1. An excellent applied understanding of modern data architectures (using Snowflake & dbt) with real-world experience of running them in production at scale both for batch and streaming data flows.

2. Extensive data engineering experience using Python both for data pipelines and application development.

3. Proficiency with cloud services (ideally AWS).

4. Experience setting up a robust SDLC (software delivery lifecycle) including use of automated testing & CI/CD (i.e. Github Actions, Jenkins).

5. A strong desire to work smarter using repeatable patterns to drive automation and engineering efficiency.

6. A strategic approach to problem solving and the ability to see the big picture at all times.

7. Good communication skills, demonstrated in the design of solutions and technical decisions, being able to bridge the gap with non-technical partners and sharing knowledge with less experienced engineers.

8. Ability to influence long term roadmap, by advocating for technical investments and building future-proof solutions.

9. A track record of developing other team members by coaching them to improve their skills and raising the bar by demonstrating quality & best practices in your own work.

Bonus Points for:

1. AWS/Azure/GCP Certifications.

2. Experience with Infrastructure as Code (e.g. Terraform).