Senior Data Engineer - Data Governance

Role

You'll join the Data Governance Squad to help improve the reliability, trust, and compliance of Depop's data ecosystem. As a Senior Data Engineer in this team, you'll lead the design and implementation of frameworks, tools, and processes that strengthen our data foundations, ensuring our data is accurate, observable, and compliant.

Your mission will be to reduce the mean time to detection and resolution of data incidents, by establishing data contracts between producers and consumers, developing robust data observability systems, and embedding governance and data protection compliance principles across the data lifecycle.

You will collaborate with product engineering, data platform, analytics, and legal teams to build confidence in data as a product – one that is reliable, auditable, and actionable.

• Champion and execute the vision for Depop's data quality, observability, and governance frameworks.
• Establish data contracts between producers and consumers to ensure schema integrity and data reliability.
• Develop and maintain systems that detect, alert, and resolve data quality issues with minimal latency.
• Build automation and tooling to reduce MTTD (Mean Time to Detection) and MTTR (Mean Time to Resolution) for data incidents.
• Partner with data platform engineers to integrate observability at every layer – ingestion, transformation, and consumption.
• Lead GDPR and privacy-by-design initiatives, ensuring compliance and traceability across all datasets.
• Define standards for metadata management, lineage tracking, and access control.
• Collaborate with analytics and product teams to ensure data definitions and quality metrics are consistent across domains.
• Mentor engineers and analysts, fostering a culture of data stewardship and accountability.
• Continuously improve data governance maturity through automation, documentation, and measurable quality KPIs.

• Proven experience as a Senior Data Engineer or in an equivalent technical leadership role in data quality, observability, or governance.
• Deep knowledge of data observability frameworks (Monte Carlo, Soda, or equivalent) and data validation tools (Great Expectations, etc.).
• Deep understanding of Data Products principles and experience applying them to improve data reliability and ownership.
• Experience designing and enforcing data contracts and quality SLAs in distributed data ecosystems.
• Proficiency in Python or Java, and experience building pipelines with Airflow, Spark, or Kafka.
• Strong understanding of data governance principles, privacy regulations (such as GDPR, CCPA), and secure data handling practices.
• Familiarity with metadata management and data catalog tools (e.g. Data Hub, Collibra, etc.).
• Demonstrated success improving data reliability and observability in large-scale data platforms.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills; you can bridge technical depth with operational impact.

• Experience implementing automated compliance monitoring or policy-as-code systems.
• Familiarity with real-time anomaly detection for data pipelines.
• Experience contributing to or leading cross-functional data reliability initiatives.
• Prior experience in consumer or marketplace platforms.
• Passion for data as a product – building reliable, observable, and compliant data systems that teams love to use.

Health + Mental Wellbeing

• PMI and cash plan healthcare access with Bupa
• Subsidised counselling and coaching with Self Space
• Cycle to Work scheme with options from Evans or the Green Commute Initiative
• Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for 24/7 confidential support
• Mental Health First Aiders across the business for support and signposting

Work/Life Balance

• 25 days of annual leave with the option to carry over up to 5 days
• Impact hours:
  Up to 2 days of additional paid leave per year for volunteering
• Fully paid 4-week sabbatical after completion of 5 years of consecutive service with Depop, to give you a chance to recharge or do something you love.
• Flexible Working:
  MyMode hybrid-working model with Flex, Office-Based, and Remote options role-dependent
• All offices are dog-friendly

Family Life

• For birth parent: 20 weeks of paid…