Principal Engineer, Data Platforms

Takeaway Group; City of London; On-site; GBP 100,000 - GBP 130,000; Full time

Job summary

A global online delivery platform is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead its Data Platforms team. This hybrid role focuses on defining technical strategy, mentoring engineers, and solving complex technical challenges. Candidates should have extensive software and data engineering experience, proficiency in modern data technologies, and strong communication skills to collaborate with various stakeholders.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience at a Principal or equivalent level in software and data engineering.
• Deep proficiency across the modern data stack.
• Proven track record with cloud-native services and infrastructure automation.
• Exceptional ability to create maintainable architectural designs.
• Strong communication skills to influence stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Define the long-term technical vision for the Data Platform.
• Design and govern the architecture for core data infrastructure.
• Provide hands-on technical guidance for critical components.
• Mentor Senior and Staff Engineers to raise technical standards.
• Lead the evaluation and adoption of new data technologies.

Skills

Software engineering

Data engineering

Python

Scala

Cloud technologies (AWS/GCP)

Data transformation frameworks

Distributed systems

Tools

Snowflake

BigQuery

Kafka

Terraform

Ansible

Job description

Principal Engineer, Data Platforms

Ready for a challenge?

Then Just Eat Takeaway.com might be the place for you. We're a leading global online delivery platform, and our vision is to empower everyday convenience. Whether it's a Friday-night feast, a post-gym poke bowl, or grabbing some groceries, our tech platform connects tens of millions of customers with hundreds of thousands of restaurant, grocery and convenience partners across the globe.

About this role

We are seeking a highly accomplished and visionary Principal Engineer to join our Data Platforms leadership team. You will serve as the top technical authority, reporting directly to the Director of Engineering, and closely pairing with the Head of Engineering. This role defines the technical strategy and architecture that enables our organisation of 50+ engineers to build and operate robust, scalable, and high-performance data systems. We value your ability to lead on strategy, deliver technical excellence, and care for the continuous growth of our engineering team.

Location: Hybrid - 3 days a week from our London or Amsterdam office & 2 days working from home. Reporting to: Director of Engineering

These are some of the key components to the position:

• Define the long-term technical vision and roadmap for our modern Data Platform, Mobius (including Data Warehousing, Data Lake, Streaming, and Governance tooling).
• Design and govern the reference architecture for core data infrastructure, ensuring optimal scalability, reliability, and security.
• Act as a hands-on contributor, tackling the most complex technical challenges and providing code-level guidance for critical components.
• Establish and enforce technical standards for code quality, observability, and Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) across all data platform teams.
• Act as a technical mentor and coach for Senior and Staff Engineers, raising the technical bar across the organisation.
• Focus on platform engineering principles to improve the developer experience, velocity, and efficiency of all data engineering teams.
• Lead the evaluation, prototyping, and adoption of new data technologies, balancing industry best practices with business needs.

What will you bring to the team?

• Extensive experience in software and data engineering, with provable experience operating at a Principal, Staff, or equivalent level.
• Deep proficiency across the modern data stack (Snowflake, BigQuery, Delta Lake, Iceberg, Kafka, Flink).
• Proven track record designing scalable, self‑service data platforms using cloud‑native services (AWS/GCP) and infrastructure automation (Terraform, Ansible).
• Expert proficiency in Python, Scala, or Go, and extensive experience with data transformation frameworks (Airflow, dbt).
• Exceptional ability to synthesise complex requirements into simple, elegant, and maintainable architectural designs.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to influence and align engineering, product, and executive stakeholders.
• Results‑driven mindset with the ability to execute quickly, adapt to change, and thrive in high‑growth, fast‑paced environments.

Desired Skills

• Experience in a rapidly scaling organisation focused on building distributed systems.
• Familiarity with data governance, lineage, and observability tools (e.g., Datadog, Prometheus, Open Telemetry).
• Strong understanding of Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) and how data platforms support the full ML lifecycle.

At JET, this is on the menu:

Our teams forge connections internally and work with some of the best‑known brands on the planet, giving us truly international impact in a dynamic environment. Fun, fast‑paced and supportive, the JET culture is about movement, growth and about celebrating every aspect of our JETers.

Inclusion, Diversity & Belonging

No matter who you are, what you look like, who you love, or where you are from, you can find your place at Just Eat Takeaway.com. We're committed to creating an inclusive culture, encouraging diversity of people and thinking, in which all employees feel they truly belong and can bring their most colourful selves to work every day.

What else is cooking?

Want to know more about our JETers, culture or company? Have a look at our career site where you can find people's stories, blogs, podcasts and more JET morsels.

Are you ready to take your seat? Apply now!

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