Principal Data Engineer

RWS Group; Maidenhead; On-site; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading data and technology firm in Maidenhead seeks a Principal Data Engineer to design and scale data infrastructure. In this role, you will collaborate with cross-functional teams and make significant architectural decisions. Ideal candidates will have extensive experience in data engineering, strong leadership skills, and a passion for mentorship. This position promises an impactful role within a diverse and inclusive culture.

Qualifications

• Deep systems thinking experience designing large-scale data platforms.
• Exceptional skills in data modelling and pipeline orchestration.
• Proven success in influencing technical direction across teams.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop data architecture for business intelligence.
• Lead through influence across data and engineering teams.
• Own reliability and performance of critical data systems.
• Mentor and develop junior data engineers.
• Implement best practices for data quality and monitoring.

Skills

Systems thinking and architecture

Data engineering fundamentals

Cross-functional leadership

Mentorship

Communication skills

Business acumen

Tools

Google Cloud Platform

Data orchestration tools

Metadata management tools

Job description

Join to apply for the Principal Data Engineer role at RWS Group

The Principal Data Engineer will be a foundational technical leader and architect, shaping how we build, scale, and evolve our data infrastructure to unlock insights and drive business value across RWS. This isn't just about writing code; you'll multiply your impact by designing systems that enable teams across the organization to make data‑driven decisions, establishing architectural patterns that scale with our growth, and mentoring engineers to raise the capabilities of our entire data organization.

In this role, you'll partner closely with Product, Engineering, Analytics, and Business leaders to translate strategic objectives into robust data solutions. You'll have the autonomy to make architectural decisions that influence how we handle data at enterprise scale, while building the bridges between technical excellence and measurable business outcomes. This is an opportunity to leave a lasting technical legacy while growing the next generation of data engineering leaders.

About Product & Technology

Product & Technology plays a pivotal role in aligning the organization with its strategic objectives and enhancing shareholder value. Product & Technology is responsible for establishing unified standards and governance practices throughout the company. Additionally, we oversee the development and maintenance of core applications essential for the seamless operation of various functions across the organization. We are committed to driving and executing future roadmaps that are in line with the overall strategic direction of RWS.

With a global reach, Product & Technology provides support services to over 7,500 end users worldwide. We take pride in managing the information security operation and safeguarding all our assets. Our core functions encompass Enterprise & Technical Architecture, Network & Voice, Infrastructure, Service Delivery, Service Operations, Data & Analytics, Security & Quality Compliance, Transformation, Application Development, Enterprise Platforms, with a dedicated team of over 500 staff, Product & Technology ensures a strong presence across all regions, enabling efficient and effective support to our global operations.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and develop our data architecture to enable business intelligence, analytics, and ML at scale, making thoughtful trade‑offs between competing approaches and technologies
• Lead through influence across data, engineering, and product teams, translating technical concepts for diverse audiences and aligning what you build with data strategy with company objectives
• Drive strategic technical decisions through clear documentation, RFCs, and presentations, anticipating data needs 2‑3 years ahead and identifying when technical debt requires attention
• Own reliability and performance of critical data systems, building for observability, establishing SLOs, and designing infrastructure that gracefully handles failure
• Mentor and develop other data engineers, establishing design patterns, conducting architecture reviews, and creating enabling systems that make the entire team more productive
• Champion operational excellence by implementing best practices for data quality, monitoring, incident response, and cost optimization across our data platform
• Evaluate and guide technology adoption, assessing emerging tools and determining when they deliver genuine value versus when existing solutions are more appropriate

Skills & Experience

• Deep systems thinking and architecture experience designing and operating large‑scale data platforms in the cloud, with demonstrated ability to make architectural decisions that balance technical elegance with business pragmatism
• Exceptional skills in data engineering and its fundamentals including data modelling, pipeline orchestration, distributed systems, and the economics of data infrastructure at scale
• Cross‑functional leadership skills with proven success influencing technical direction across teams, partnering with diverse stakeholders, and translating between technical and business contexts
• Track record of multiplying impact through mentorship, documentation, and building enablers and systems that make teams more effective—you’ve helped develop other senior engineers
• Excellence in communication, with ability to write clear technical documentation, present to technical and non‑technical audiences, and drive consensus on complex decisions
• Business and product acumen that enables you to prioritize work based on ROI, push back constructively when needed, and connect technical decisions to measurable outcomes

Nice to Have

• Experience with Google Cloud Platform ecosystem, particularly BigQuery, Dataform, Cloud Composer, or other GCP data services
• Strong background in metadata management and data cataloging, including tools like DataHub, Alation, or building custom metadata solutions
• Familiarity with modern data orchestration tools (Airflow, Prefect, Dagster) and DataOps practices
• Experience with cloud‑native compute patterns including serverless, containerization (Kubernetes), and infrastructure as code
• Hands‑on experience implementing data mesh principles or other decentralized data architectures
• Experience with developing or deploying Model Context Protocol for Data assets.
• Contributions to open source data projects or active participation in the data engineering community

Life at RWS -

Our purpose is to unlock global understanding. This means our work fundamentally recognizes the value of every language and culture. So, we celebrate difference, we are inclusive and believe that diversity makes us strong. We want every employee to grow as an individual and excel in their career.

In return, we expect all our people to live by the values that unite us: to partner, putting clients fist and winning together, to pioneer, innovating fearlessly and leading with vision and courage, to progress, aiming high and growing through actions and to deliver, owning the outcome and building trust with our colleagues and clients.

RWS embraces DEI

RWS embraces DEI and promotes equal opportunity, we are an Equal Opportunity Employer and prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind. RWS is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all employees and to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions at RWS are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, sex, age, disability, or sexual orientation. RWS will not tolerate discrimination based on any of these characteristics.

Recruitment Agencies: RWS Holdings PLC does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward any unsolicited resumes to any RWS employees. Any unsolicited resume received will be treated as the property of RWS and Terms & Conditions associated with the use of such resume will be considered null and void.