Principal Data Engineer - Finance & Transformation

A career without limits

As the nation’s flag carrier, we take great pride in connecting Britain with the world and the world with Britain.

It’s something we’ve been doing for over 100 years, ever since we launched the world’s first international scheduled air service between London and Paris.

This originality has been in our blood since day one. It’s the spirit we share with the people that fly with us, our partners, and our colleagues.

So, whether you are a reassuring voice on the end of a phone, a smile at the door, under a wing keeping the turbines spinning or landing us gently in far-flung places, a job at British Airways is yours to make.

We know great things can happen when you’re inspired to think big and bring your ambition to work every day, which is why, at British Airways the sky is never the limit.

This role forms part of the data delivery teams The Principal Data Engineer leads others in the hands‑on data engineering tasks, and will also retain close to the technical detail, leading the development, operation, and continuous improvement of data ingestion, storage and processing that underpins data across the organisation.

Principal Data Engineers are expected to lead the data lifecycle from development to deployment, monitoring, incident response, performance optimisation, and deprecation in line with modern Dev Ops principles.

Leading agile teams and supported by senior engineers, this role involves building reusable components, automating components, and embedding operational best practices to ensure that the platform is secure, resilient, observable, and cost‑efficient

• Leading other in the build, test, and deploy data pipelines to support the secure and scalable delivery of data.

• Maintain and operate data products, ensuring their availability, performance, and resilience through monitoring, alerting, patching, and incident resolution.

• Assure code and automation scripts to manage data flows.

• Lead service reviews, health checks, and root cause analyses to improve data processing reliability and reduce operational overhead.

• Set standards for data processing documentation, ensuring changes are tracked and version‑controlled.

• Support senior engineers with the delivery of engineering patterns, coding standards, and automated testing practices.

• Actively lead agile ceremonies, delivery planning, and retrospectives to support continuous improvement.

• Define and measure the developer experience by working with data product teams to streamline integration and resolve data processing related issues.

• Will line manage Senior Data Engineers.

• Will be needed to be on call on a rota basis to support data products

• Delivers work reliably and to a high standard. Builds trust by being consistent, transparent and accountable in all interactions.

• Seeks to understand the problem behind the ask. Actively explores new ways to frame requirements and improve processes through better data use.

• Encourages collaborative problem‑solving. Supports colleagues by sharing knowledge and enabling others to make informed decisions.

• Raises concerns constructively and challenges ambiguity or assumptions to ensure clarity and value in delivery.

• Works openly across disciplines, connecting stakeholders and delivery teams. Builds shared understanding through strong communication and engagement.

• Excellent SQL development experience

• Highly experienced in data ingestion, processing and storage techniques on cloud native tooling.

• Experience cloud data management i.e. Snowflake, AWS, DBT, or similar Paas and SaaS offerings.

• Experience of enterprise data management and security at scale.

• Knowledge of data modelling and…