Principal Data Engineer

Overview

Home. There’s no place like it. And there’s no feeling like helping people create the joy of feeling truly at home.

At Dunelm, that’s what we do.

We’re the UK’s number one choice for homewares because we make home life lovelier for our customers. And the caring and supportive culture we've created makes this a place you'll feel right at home too.

Work your way, together

We're a hybrid business, which means you'll have flexibility alongside time together with your team. In this role,you can expect 2 days per week in our London or Leicester office,helping you stay connected, collaborate and do your best work for our customers.

The Data and Analytics department is central to Dunelm’s Strategy in driving value from data through decision intelligence. The department comprises of 5 interconnected capabilities:

Future fit data platform – the enterprise data platform delivered by our core data engineering teams, providing a trusted, single version of business truth to drive value through data and decision intelligence.

Self-Service Analytics Centre of Excellence – the core team responsible for driving governed self-service analytics adoption across our organisation. The team maintains, enhances and develops our ThoughtSpot-led, AI-enabled analytics ecosystem, provides advice, guidance and support to our business community, and maintains a suite of centrally managed enterprise analytics products.

ABODE (Advanced Business Optimisation Engine) – A suite of interconnected Analytics and AI models powering high velocity, complex decisions across our organisation.

Optimisation Centre of Excellence – The core team responsible for supporting high value investment decisions across our organisation through bespoke, specialised analytics.

Customer Insights – A dedicated team of customer focused analysts, helping to drive customer obsessed decisions through improved customer insight.

What you'll be doing

Role Summary:

This role will shape how Dunelm uses data at scale, improving the quality, reliability and speed of data products that support better commercial, customer and operational decisions.

The Principal Data Engineer provides technical and people leadership for Dunelm’s data engineering capability, shaping the platform, practices and talent needed to deliver trusted, scalable and cost‑effective data products across the business.

The role holder will act as the primary solution architect for our fit for future, cloud first data platform. An expert in modern data stack platforms (Snowflake, AWS, DBT) and data modelling the role holder will mentor engineers across the department, advising on best practice, cost efficient and scalable data products and solutions. Partnering closely with enterprise architecture and technology leadership to ensure data platform strategy aligns to enterprise standards, governance and long‑term technology direction.

The Principal Data Engineer role holder will balance duties across line management and talent development, technical and design leadership and hands‑on problem solving and solution design, splitting their time accordingly depending upon the challenges and priorities at hand.

The role holder will work closely with our Principal Product Delivery Manager and Principal Data Quality Specialist to form the three amigos, leading our teams to deliver a fit for future cloud first data ecosystem.

As a member of the Data leadership team the role holder is expected to represent Dunelm's data engineering capability internally and externally through industry events, professional networks, vendor forums and technology communities while bringing emerging thinking and best practice back into the organisation.

What this role requires of you:

• Accountable for the design, engineering and quality of the technical high value, data focused outcomes.
• Accountable for ensuring the design, solutions and capabilities support delivering the business’ data and tech strategy.
• Accountable for ensuring the alignment of technical solutions to architectural governance, data roadmaps and data strategy.
• Accountable for driving continuous improvement across the core data platforms, including managing and remediating technical debt.
• Accountable for managing the delivery of cost‑effective solutions, monitoring consumption and identifying opportunities to optimise technology spend.

Responsibilities

• Provide leadership and mentoring to lead data engineers.
• Leading on the creation and design of technical solutions for the FA, collaborating across teams to ensure solutions are delivered to expected timelines and quality.
• Providing estimates for epics and stories with a specific focus on technical complexity and dependencies, working alongside product and Delivery to support planning.
• Owning technical risks and issues at the project and program level.
• Owning remediation issues for service and support across the data ecosystem
• Ensuring that the data engineering team is working to support the ongoing delivery of the broader Dunelm data strategy and 3 Year business plan.
• Responsible for supporting and developing our talent through the lead engineers, ensuring clear and supportive career pathways, succession and retention/engagement strategies for data engineers.
• Responsible for technical recruitment, retention and onboarding of Lead Data Engineers within the engineering team.
• Responsible for effectively administering data engineering colleagues’ compensation, benefits, and promotion process.
• Responsible for developing Lead Data Engineering talent through effective performance management and supporting leads in line managing data engineers.

What we’ll look for in you

Essential skills:

• Extensive experience line managing technical colleagues through both coaching and mentoring techniques.
• Extensive experience in design and development of modern data stack, cloud first data platforms and pipelines, specifically including the following:
• Cloud Data Platforms such as Snowflake, Redshift or Big Query (ideally Snowflake)
• AWS Platforms including S3, firehose, lambda, SQS and Kinesis
• DBT Labs
• Programming in one or more languages e.g. Python, Node
• Excellent SQL skills
• Data modelling including conceptual, logical and physical design (including extensive experience of dimensional modelling practises and techniques).
• Best practise approach for continuous integration and delivery using tools such as Gitlab/GitHub, Terraform for Infra as code.

Desirable skills:

• Visualisations tools Such As Power BI and ThoughtSpot
• Understanding of quality best practise and understanding of test automation.
• Experience in consumption‑based cost management, including monitoring, optimisation and cost reduction.
• Vendor management from an operational and service performance lens

Behaviours:

Connecting

• Creating a strong sense of connection and common purpose within the team
• Using your network of internal and external connections to help shape our plans
• Building strong relationships with other teams and connecting colleagues across team boundaries

Adapting

• Anticipating pitfalls and responding to issues, having courage to change direction to achieve the required outcomes
• Creating a safe environment for the team to experiment and learn, helping others learn from mistakes.
• Promoting a culture of flexible working, helping the team feel at home wherever and however they choose to work.

Growth Mindset

• Being bold and brave in what you can achieve with the team.
• Coaching the team to improve performance and develop their careers.
• Growing the talent and capability needed now and, in the future, creating great learning experiences for the team.

Thinking Big

• Raising the bar with every colleague hire, move or promotion to build capability and be fit for the future.
• Using the internal environment and emerging external trends to inspire big thinking
• Having a winning mindset and motivating the team to succeed and deliver our ambitions.

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