Job Specifications
Lead Engineer – Data Platform as a Service
Location: United Kingdom (Hybrid / Remote-first depending on business policy)
Employment Type: Full-time
Industry: Banking / Financial Services
Function: Engineering / Platform Engineering
Role Purpose
We are building a Data Platform as a Service (DPaaS) to standardise how data pipelines are designed, deployed, observed, and governed across the organisation.
The Lead Engineer will be responsible for translating architectural direction into a production‑grade Data Fabric, working closely with platform, data, and cloud teams.
Key Responsibilities
Lead the development of core platform services including ingestion, orchestration, observability, governance, and cost transparency.
Design and implement platform APIs and developer experience components.
Establish engineering standards, guardrails, and reusable patterns aligned with enterprise architecture.
Build cloud‑native platform capabilities across GCP and/or AWS.
Work with data infrastructure components including Kafka, Spark, and metadata systems.
Ensure reliability, security, scalability, and operational excellence within all platform services.
Mentor senior engineers and provide technical leadership for platform initiatives.
Partner with architecture, security, infrastructure, and data domain teams to drive platform adoption.
Success Measures (First 6–12 Months)
Platform services are adopted by multiple internal engineering/data teams.
Architecture, standards, and operating models are documented and consistently applied.
Reduction in time‑to‑production for new data pipelines and platform-dependent workloads.
Engineering teams report improved development experience and reliability as a result of the platform.
Required Experience
Experience building or leading internal platforms, PaaS, or developer platforms.
Strong background in designing distributed systems and cloud-native architectures.
Hands-on engineering expertise with Java (OO, performance-focused).
Experience with Kafka, Spark, or similar data infrastructure technologies.
Demonstrated experience across GCP and/or AWS services.
Experience in regulated, complex enterprise environments.
Ability to balance hands-on engineering with architectural and technical product responsibilities.
Preferred Skills
Experience building control planes, data orchestration services, or metadata platforms.
Exposure to platform observability, cost insights, and governance frameworks.
Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines, containerisation, and operational tooling.
Ability to influence architectural direction and drive cross-team alignment.
Candidate Profile
Ideal candidates will have worked on:
Internal platforms used by numerous engineering teams.
Reusable services, APIs, and frameworks.
High-reliability, large-scale distributed systems.
High-performance Java-based platforms.
This Role Is Not Suitable For Candidates Who
Primarily deliver one-off application features or CRUD-based services.
Have limited experience in platform engineering or reusable systems design.
Are not comfortable owning architecture, adoption, and operational reliability.
Tech Stack (Context Only)
Java (OO, performance-focused), Kafka, Spark, GCP, AWS, CI/CD, observability tooling, platform APIs.
About the Company
NextWave is an award-winning Consultancy. Financial Services rms trust us to provide market-leading Strategy, Specialist transformation and AI-enabled automation Solutions. We help our clients to rapidly deliver business outcomes.
NextWave supports many of the world's leading Financial Institutions, including global banks, insurance firms, asset and wealth managers, private banking and private equity houses.
We have specialist transformation teams across Front Ofce, Risk, Data, Finance, Compliance and Operations, plus solu...
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