Principal Data Engineer

Internal use only - Grade E

We’re the team behind digital retailer Very.

Our purpose, helping families get more out of life, powers everything we do.

And we want our people to get more out of life too! If you’re high-performing, ambitious and make the most of every opportunity, we want to hear from you. In return, you’ll enjoy heaps of flexibility, great perks and benefits, and the freedom to be yourself, keep learning and take your career wherever you want it to go.

If you love making a difference, you’ll love making it sparkle for millions of Very customers.

You’ll be one of the technical experts within the Data Enablement team, a hands-on Principal Data Engineer at the heart of our data transformation.

You’ll work across multiple initiatives, partnering with Engineering Managers, Product Managers, and other senior engineers to solve complex technical problems, improve our engineering practices, and guide the evolution of our platform.

You’ll remain hands-on, leading by example through architecture, design, coding, mentoring, and technical decision-making. You’ll have the opportunity to influence technology choices, define engineering standards, and build solutions that will shape the future of data at Very.

You’ll help drive the future of data engineering at Very by:

• Providing technical leadership across multiple teams and initiatives.
• Designing scalable, resilient, and secure data architectures.
• Building and evolving cloud-native data platforms and services.
• Leading the design and implementation of complex data engineering solutions.
• Driving improvements in performance, scalability, reliability, and cost optimisation.
• Setting engineering standards through code reviews, reusable patterns, and best practices.
• Supporting engineers through coaching, mentoring, and technical leadership.
• Collaborating with Product, Platform, and Architecture teams to align technical direction with business priorities.
• Leading investigations into complex production issues and driving long-term improvements.
• Identifying technical risks and opportunities, helping to shape the future roadmap of the platform.

You’ll be an experienced engineer who enjoys solving difficult problems and helping others succeed.

You’ll likely bring:

• Experience building and supporting production data solutions.
• Strong knowledge of AWS cloud services, including technologies such as Amazon S3, EKS, Lambda, SNS, Event Bridge, and IAM.
• Strong coding skills in Python and SQL, with exposure to Java or Scala being beneficial.
• Experience with technologies such as Iceberg, Starburst, Teradata, HVR, or similar enterprise data platforms would be beneficial.
• Experience working with data lakes, data warehouses, Lakehouse technologies, or enterprise data platforms.
• A solid understanding of modern data engineering concepts such as data ingestion, change data capture (CDC), data modelling, and analytics.
• Experience working with version control, CI/CD, and modern engineering practices.
• A collaborative mindset and a willingness to learn from others.
• A desire to continually improve both your own skills and the platform around you.

• Flexible, hybrid working model
• Inclusive culture and environment, check out our Glassdoor reviews

• £1000 flexible benefits allowance to suit your needs
• 30 days holiday + bank holidays
• Linked In Learning access
• Bonus potential (performance and business-related)
• Up to 25% discount on

• Matched pension up to 6%
• More benefits can be found on our career site

You will be required to undertake a credit, CIFAS, Right to Work checks and if a specific requirement of your role a DBS (criminal records) check. Should your application progress we require you to let the team know if there is anything you need to disclose in relation to any of these checks prior to them being undertaken, including any unspent criminal convictions.

Our talent acquisition team will be in touch if you’re successful so keep an eye on your emails! We’ll arrange a short call to learn more about you, as well as answer any questions you have. If it feels like we’re a good match, we’ll share your CV with the hiring manager to review. Our…