Data Platform Tech Lead

FreeAgent Holdings Ltd.; City of Edinburgh; Hybrid; GBP 59,000 - 87,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading tech company based in Edinburgh is seeking a Data Platform Tech Lead to design and implement their data platform while leading a team of engineers. The role requires strong experience with modern data pipeline stacks and collaboration with cross-functional teams. Candidates should also have knowledge of data management regulations and familiarity with machine learning practices. The position offers a flexible working pattern and competitive salary, alongside various employee benefits including health care and share schemes.

Benefits

33 days holiday

Flexible/hybrid working

Private health care

Life assurance

5% matched pension contributions

Summer 4-day weeks

Share schemes

Sabbatical leave

Cycle to work scheme

Wellness webinars

Learning budgets

Volunteering day

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with a modern data pipeline stack.
• Experience with data lakehouse storage architectures.
• Strong understanding of data modeling techniques.

Responsibilities

• Lead an agile development process for your team.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with engineering teams.
• Line-manage your team and mentor new hires.

Skills

Data pipeline stack experience

Data lakehouse architectures design

Data modeling techniques

Knowledge of data management regulations

Modern software development practices

Infrastructure as code

Containerized services deployment

Machine learning platforms knowledge

Lean and agile methodologies

People management skills development

Tools

Dagster

dbt

Terraform

Docker

SageMaker

Job description

Data Platform Tech Lead

Department: Engineering

Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time

Location: Edinburgh

Reporting To: Dave Evans

Compensation: £59,000 - £87,000 / year

Description

Our Data Platform Team mission is to empower FreeAgent’s engineers to reliably, securely, and sustainably derive value from our data assets.

The role

We’re looking for a Tech Lead who will play an active part in designing and implementing our data platform. You will lead a small dedicated team of engineers, ensuring they are well directed, motivated, productive, and engaged. You will collaborate closely with the Data Science and Analytics Engineering teams to provide the right tools for their jobs and enable stakeholders across FreeAgent to turn messy data into valuable insights. This is a team leadership role with a focus on technical contribution.

Our past projects include the design and delivery of an event system which processes over 100 million events per month, automating metadata management in our data lake, and implementing mechanisms for running regular quality checks on our data. Our platform supports machine learning based automations for document extraction, bill, expense and bank transaction categorisation. We categorise over two million bank transactions every month with accounting grade accuracy.

Currently, we’re in the process of migrating to a new orchestration tool, which presents exciting opportunities to shape FreeAgent’s data tech stack and make a positive impact by bringing modern engineering practices to our data pipelines.

Day‑to‑day responsibilities

• Help realise our vision for a next‑generation data platform to make it easy to collect, process, store and analyse customer and business data.
• Lead an agile development process for your team.
• Collaborate cross‑functionally with other engineering teams.
• Assist in producing common development and architectural standards and ensure they are upheld across engineering teams.
• Cut code alongside your team when required and review pull requests.
• Line‑manage your team, onboard, coach and mentor any new hires.
• Keep up to date with developments in data, ML and AI technology and techniques.
• Work with senior engineering leadership to understand the big picture and the future vision of the FreeAgent stack and drive forward the development of the data platform to meet these goals.

Qualifications and experience

• Hands‑on experience with a modern data pipeline stack; we are migrating to Dagster, dbt and dlt and work with structured and unstructured data from a variety of sources.
• Designed and implemented data lakehouse storage architectures using tools like S3, Redshift, Glue, and Athena.
• Experience employing appropriate data modelling techniques; we rely on dimensional models for business reporting.
• Up‑to‑date knowledge of data management and retention regulations, security and ethics.
• Comfortable following a modern software development methodology to implement and test changes to complex systems; we use Python, Ruby and Git/Github.
• Experience building and managing infrastructure as code; we use Terraform.
• Experience deploying containerised services with Docker and GitHub Actions.
• Experience with machine learning platforms such as SageMaker.
• A comprehensive understanding of lean and agile development methodologies.
• Experience or enthusiasm to develop people management skills.
• Keeping up to date with new techniques, technologies and resources.

Work life and perks

We believe in a strong work‑life balance. The role is permanent, full time (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm). The position is based in our Edinburgh office with the opportunity to adopt hybrid working (2 days in the office and 3 days at home each week). We offer a 35‑hour working week, high‑quality A/V equipment, a no‑blame culture, and a flexible hybrid pattern.

Benefits and salary

• 33 days holiday (plus an extra day for each year you are with us).
• Flexible/hybrid working.
• Private health care.
• Life assurance.
• 5% matched pension contributions.
• Summer 4‑day weeks (providing 8 additional days off).
• Buy‑as‑you‑earn share schemes.
• Sabbatical leave (unpaid).
• Cycle to work scheme.
• Wellness webinars.
• Focused learning time and learning budgets.
• Volunteering day.

Senior level salary starts at £59,000 – £72,000 per annum with potential to progress to £80,000 within the band. Staff level salary starts at £80,000 – £87,000 per annum with potential to progress to £95,000 within the band. Salaries are linked to performance and growth opportunities.

Application process

Please review the hiring process for this role so you can ensure your application contains all the information we need.