Principal Data Engineer

Job Description Summary Job Description

Principal Data Engineer

Permanent

Location:
Edinburgh or Witham (We believe in the power of in-person collaboration, and our hybrid model requires colleagues to be in the office a minimum of 40% of their time)

Salary: A competitive salary from £64,400 - £96,600 (effective from April 2026) depending on the experience you can bring

Closing date: 25th February 2026

We’re a company of ambitious, collaborative problem-solvers who get things done – we’re looking for like-minded people to join us.

We help people live their best lives. We help them with the big stuff, for the moments that matter:
Pensions, Savings, Investments. At Aegon, we strive in creating a diverse organisation that plays a meaningful role in driving greater equity, inclusion and belonging.

Data is crucial to our organisation — it shapes how we operate every day and is fundamental to achieving our goals. As we continue to evolve, our data function is undergoing a transformation. We're reimagining how we work, incrementally improving our data architecture, strengthening our engineering practices, expanding our capabilities, and driving innovation across the business.

We are hiring for multiple Principal Data Engineers in Edinburgh or Witham. In this role, you will lead the design and development of complex cloud-first data solutions in AWS, ensuring high-quality, scalable code and engineering excellence. You will collaborate with data engineers, product managers, analysts, BI engineers, and data users to deliver innovative, self-service data solutions. You’ll also work with senior stakeholders to shape the roadmap and backlog for the data capability team, aligning with strategic business objectives.

Your responsibilities will span the entire data lifecycle, from design to production — ensuring solutions meet defined standards.

• Team Leadership: Provide technical guidance, foster continuous learning, and take ownership of team capabilities and deliverables.
• Architect and Build Scalable Data Solutions: Design and develop scalable data solutions using AWS-native technologies (DMS, Glue, RDS, Lambda, Python, PySpark, Athena, Dynamo
  
  DB, Postgre
  
  SQL, Kinesis, SQS, SNS) and BI tools (Tableau, Power BI, Quick Sight).
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Working closely with cross-functional teams to gather business requirements, designing effective data solutions, and ensuring timely and high-quality project delivery.
• Champion Engineering Best Practices: Establish coding standards, conduct code reviews, and promote quality assurance practices.
• Ensuring Data Quality and Reliability: Develop and maintain automated testing frameworks for data pipelines.
• Platform Design: Architect data platform solutions aligned with AUK Architecture team standards.

• Experience in a Senior, Lead, or Principal Data Engineer role.
• Strong track record of delivering cloud-based data platforms, data lakes, BI, and advanced analytics solutions.
• Deep understanding of data architecture principles and data modelling techniques in modern serverless cloud environments.
• Hands‑on experience with Python, PySpark, SQL, and infrastructure‑as‑code tools (AWS Cloud Formation, Terraform, AWS CLI).
• Extensive expertise in AWS services and architecture, including EC2, S3, DMS, Lambda, API Gateway, AWS Glue, and Quick Sight or similar in other Cloud environments like GCP / Azure.
• Proficiency in building scalable, serverless data pipelines using cloud-native ETL tools, such as AWS Glue, Azure Data Factory, or Google Dataflow.
• Experience with SQL and No
  
  SQL cloud databases.
• Strong grasp of data engineering principles and best practices.
• Ability to implement robust data quality controls and monitoring frameworks.
• Knowledge of data security best practices.
• Proven ability to lead and mentor engineering teams.
• Skilled in translating business requirements into technical specifications.

• We’re serious about your future and our enhanced pension scheme is now in place. We ask you to contribute 3% of your salary to your pension and we’ll put in 9%. If you decide to contribute more, we’ll match it up to a…