Principal Data Engineer (we have office locations in Cambridge, Leeds and London)

Job Description

Principal Data Engineer 

At Genomics England, we’re looking for an experienced Principal Data Engineer to help shape the future of data engineering across our organisation. 

Our data supports clinical and research use at national scale. Behind this sits a complex engineering challenge: creating secure, resilient and scalable platforms that enable highly sensitive genomic and health data to be used responsibly and effectively. 

This is where you will make a difference 

As Principal Data Engineer, you’ll provide senior technical leadership across our data engineering capability. You’ll help us make thoughtful, sustainable technology choices, establish effective data engineering practices and build robust platforms that teams can confidently develop and operate. 

This is a Principal individual contributor role with meaningful scope to influence how data engineering develops across Genomics England. Working across teams and technical domains, you’ll shape direction, provide architectural guidance and remain closely involved in hands-on engineering and delivery. 

You’ll collaborate with data engineers, architects, bioinformaticians, product teams, governance colleagues and senior stakeholders to solve complex data engineering challenges across our clinical and research data platforms. 

You’ll also lead the development of our wider data engineering capability, helping to shape how we grow and strengthen data engineering practices across the organisation. Through mentoring, technical guidance and knowledge sharing, you’ll support colleagues to grow their expertise and help teams adopt consistent, sustainable approaches to data engineering.

Why this role matters 

The data platforms behind our clinical and research work need to be secure, reliable and designed for the long term. As Principal Data Engineer, you’ll have the opportunity to shape how we approach those challenges across the organisation. 

You’ll influence data engineering beyond a single team while remaining close to the technology and contributing directly to delivery. Your impact will be seen not only in the platforms and solutions you help create, but in the engineering practices you establish, the decisions you help shape and the colleagues you support to develop. 

Ultimately, your work will help us build sustainable data engineering capability and enable the responsible use of complex clinical, genomic and research data. 

What you’ll be doing 

• Providing technical leadership across our data engineering capability, helping shape strategic and technical direction, roadmaps and sustainable technology choices 

• Setting clear standards, patterns and practices for secure, scalable and reliable data platforms, pipelines and data products 

• Leading and contributing hands-on to the design and delivery of complex data solutions across cloud and hybrid environments 

• Providing architectural guidance across areas such as Lakehouse, distributed and event-driven systems 

• Working collaboratively across engineering, architecture, bioinformatics, product and governance to solve complex technical challenges 

• Promoting interoperability, open standards, data modelling, metadata and provenance, supporting the responsible and effective use of data 

• Embedding privacy, security and regulatory requirements into platforms handling sensitive clinical and research data 

• Strengthening engineering practices and platform resilience through DataOps, DevOps, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, automation, observability and security by design 

• Evaluating emerging technologies and helping teams make thoughtful, appropriate and sustainable technology choices 

• Mentoring experienced engineers, sharing knowledge and contributing to technical communities and design groups to help develop capability across the organisation 

What we’re looking for 

You’ll bring substantial data engineering experience and the technical depth to operate at Principal level. Just as importantly, you’ll be comfortable working across teams and organisational boundaries, bringing people together around technical decisions and communicating effectively with stakeholders at different levels. 

What you’ll bring 

• Proven ability to operate at Principal level within data engineering, combining deep technical expertise with experience shaping technical and architectural direction across multiple teams 

• The ability to communicate complex technical decisions and trade-offs clearly, build trusted relationships and work collaboratively with technical and non-technical stakeholders across a matrix environment 

• Extensive experience designing and delivering complex, enterprise-scale data platforms and systems, from initial design through to production 

• Deep knowledge of modern data engineering, cloud infrastructure and scalable data storage and processing, alongside strong hands-on programming experience. 

• Strong knowledge of data modelling and the wider data lifecycle, including metadata, provenance, governance and approaches to interoperability 

• Experience designing secure and resilient systems for sensitive or highly governed data, ideally within a complex, regulated environment such as healthcare, genomics or research 

• A strong understanding of modern software engineering practices, including CI/CD, automation, infrastructure as code and platform reliability, with experience establishing reusable patterns and sustainable engineering approaches 

• A collaborative approach to technical leadership, with experience mentoring engineers, sharing knowledge and supporting the development of others 

• A Master’s degree, or equivalent experience, with a specialism in data or infrastructure 

You do not need to come from a genomics background. Experience working with complex, sensitive data in a highly governed environment will be important in this role. 

It would be helpful, but not essential, if you have experience with 

• Genomic, bioinformatics or clinical data platforms, including formats such as VCF, BAM or FASTQ 

• Standards such as GA4GH, OMOP or FHIR 

• Orchestration technologies such as Airflow, Prefect or AWS Glue 

• Lakehouse or data mesh approaches, and batch, streaming, distributed or event-driven architectures 

• Secure Data Environments, federated research platforms or clinical systems 

• Additional programming languages such as Scala, Java or Shell/Bash 

Qualifications

• A Master’s degree, or equivalent experience, with a specialism in data or infrastructure 

Additional Information

Salary From: £103,500
Closing Date: Monday 12th October @ 23:00 (UK time)

Being an integral part of such a meaningful mission is extremely rewarding in itself, but in order to support our people, we’re continually improving our benefits package. We pride ourselves on investing in our people and supporting them to achieve their career goals, as well as offering a benefits package including: 

• Generous Leave:  30 days’ holiday, plus bank holidays, plus additional leave for long service, and also the option to apply for up to 30 days of remote working abroad annually (approval required).
• Family-Friendly: Blended working arrangements, flexible working, enhanced maternity, paternity and shared parental leave benefits.
• Pension & Financial: Defined contribution pension (Genomics England double-matches up to 10%, however you can contribute more if you wish), Life Assurance (3x salary), an Electric Vehicle salary sacrifice scheme and a Give As You Earn scheme.
• Learning & Development: Individual learning budgets, support for training and certifications, and reimbursement for one annual professional subscription (approval required).
• Recognition & Rewards: Employee recognition programme and referral scheme.
• Health & Wellbeing: Subsidised gym membership, a free Headspace account, and access to an Employee Assistance Programme, eye tests, flu jabs.

Equal opportunities and our commitment to a diverse and inclusive workplace 

Genomics England is actively committed to providing and supporting an inclusive environment that promotes equity, diversity and inclusion best practice both within our community and in any other area where we have influence. We are proud of our diverse community where everyone can come to work and feel welcomed and treated with respect regardless of any disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, or social background. 

Genomics England’s policies of non-discrimination and equity and will be applied fairly to all people, regardless of age, disability, gender identity or reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, being pregnant or recently becoming a parent, race, religion or beliefs, sex or sexual orientation, length of service, whether full or part-time or employed under a permanent or a fixed-term contract or any other relevant factor.  

Genomics England does not tolerate any form of discrimination, harassment, victimisation or bullying at work. Such behaviour undermines our mission and core values and diminishes the dignity, respect and integrity of all parties. Our People policies outline our commitment to inclusivity. 

We aim to remove barriers in our recruitment processes and to be flexible with our interview processes. Should you require any adjustments that may help you to fully participate in the recruitment process, we encourage you to discuss this with us. 

Culture

We have four key behaviours that represent what we would like Genomics England to feel like and the culture we want to encourage, in order for us to achieve our mission. These behaviours help us all work well together, deliver on our outcomes, celebrate our successes and share feedback with each other. You can read about these and other aspects of our culture here Culture | Genomics England

Blended working model

Genomics England operates a blended working model as we know our people appreciate the flexibility that hybrid working can bring. We expect most people to come into the office a minimum of 2 times each month. However, this will vary according to role and will be agreed with your team leader. There is no expectation that people will return to the office full time unless they want to, however, some of our roles require full time on site attendance e.g., lab teams, reception team. 

Our teams and squads have, and will continue to reflect on what works best for them to work together successfully and have the freedom to design working patterns to suit, beyond the minimum. Our office locations are: Canary Wharf, Cambridge and Leeds.

Onboarding background checks

As part of our recruitment process, all successful candidates are subject to a Standard Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.  We therefore require applicants to disclose any previous offences at point of application, as some unspent convictions may mean we are unable to proceed with your application due to the nature of our work in healthcare. 

Company Description

Genomics England is a global leader in enabling genomic medicine and research, focused on creating a world where everyone benefits from genomic healthcare. Building on the 100,000 Genomes Project, we support the NHS’s world-first national whole genome sequencing service and run the growing National Genomic Research Library, alongside delivering numerous major genomics initiatives. By connecting research and clinical care at national scale, we enable immediate healthcare benefits and advances for the future.

Our mission is to provide the evidence and digital systems so that by 2035 genomics could play a role in up to half of all healthcare interactions, whilst securing the UK’s position as the best place to discover, prove and benefit from genomic innovations.

We are accelerating our impact and working with patients, doctors, scientists, government and industry to improve genomic testing, and help researchers access the health data and technology they need to make new medical discoveries and create more effective, targeted medicines for everybody.

Behind the Healthcare and Research outcomes, Genomics England delivers through designing, developing and operating complex healthcare software systems.

We're on the cusp of big changes with the real prospect of genomics becoming the fabric of everyday healthcare through the lifetime - from birth to old age.