Lead Data Engineer

LiveScore Group is seeking a Lead Data Engineer to provide technical leadership and hands-on contribution within a data engineering team. This role is crucial in designing, building, and optimising robust data pipelines and infrastructure for a global sports betting and media business.

The Lead Data Engineer will be responsible for delivering high-quality data solutions that support LiveScore Group’s strategic goals. This individual will mentor junior engineers, ensure technical excellence in their domain, and collaborate with various stakeholders to maintain scalable and efficient data systems.

• Act as a primary technical point of contact and subject matter expert for specific data engineering projects or domains, guiding team members through complex technical challenges and promoting innovative solutions.
• Design, develop, test, and deploy highly scalable, reliable, and fault-tolerant data pipelines and ETL/ELT processes, including data ingestion from diverse sources, data transformation, and data loading into various data stores.
• Work closely with Data Architects to translate architectural blueprints and standards into concrete implementations, ensuring new data components align with the overall data strategy and infrastructure requirements.
• Actively mentor and coach junior and mid-level data engineers, providing constructive feedback, sharing technical knowledge, and fostering their growth in coding, data modelling, and general data engineering best practices.
• Maintain a significant hands-on role in coding, data modelling, infrastructure-as-code development, and platform configuration, leading by example and ensuring high-quality output.
• Take direct responsibility for ensuring the quality, integrity, and performance of data assets within their assigned domain or projects, implementing monitoring, validation, and optimisation strategies.
• Proactively identify and implement technical optimisations for data processing, storage, and infrastructure utilization to improve efficiency, reduce operational costs, and enhance system performance.
• Lead and participate in rigorous code reviews, advocating for and enforcing engineering best practices, coding standards, and architectural patterns to maintain high code quality and system stability.
• Diagnose, troubleshoot, and provide effective solutions for highly complex data-related issues, incidents, and performance bottlenecks, often working under pressure.
• Collaborate effectively with other engineering teams, product managers, data scientists, and business stakeholders to understand data requirements, integrate solutions, and provide technical insights.

• Proven, in-depth experience as a senior or lead data engineer with a strong portfolio of hands-on contributions to designing, building, and optimising complex, large-scale data pipelines and ETL/ELT processes (required).
• Strong practical experience with Enterprise Data Warehousing (EDW) concepts, principles, and implementation, specifically including the design and practical application of a single, integrated data model for analytical purposes (required).
• Hands-on experience with cloud-native data services and infrastructure on at least one major cloud provider (e.g., AWS services like S3, Redshift, Glue, EMR; GCP services like BigQuery, Dataflow, Pub/Sub; Azure services like Data Lake, Synapse Analytics) (required).
• Demonstrated ability to identify, propose, and implement technical solutions that lead to significant cost savings in data processing, storage, and infrastructure within a large-scale data environment (required).
• Expert proficiency in software development methodologies (e.g., Agile, Scrum), version control (Git), CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and comprehensive understanding of software engineering best practices (required).
• Exceptional coding skills in at least one relevant programming language (e.g., Python, Scala, Java, JavaScript, C/C++), with a focus on writing clean, efficient, and maintainable code (required).
• Extensive experience with various database technologies including relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL), NoSQL databases (e.g., MongoDB, Cassandra), and analytical data warehouses (e.g., Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery) (required).
• Solid understanding of data architecture patterns (e.g., Data Mesh, Data Lakehouse, Lambda/Kappa architectures), distributed systems, and their practical application (required).
• Practical experience in developing and maintaining robust and auditable data solutions for regulatory reporting, particularly within the gaming or other highly regulated industries (required).
• Fluent in AI prompting alongside staying ahead of emerging AI technologies (required).
• A natural leader who can effectively guide, inspire, and technically mentor junior and mid-level engineers. Possesses the ability to break down complex problems, provide clear direction, and foster a learning environment, thereby enhancing team capabilities and promoting adherence to best practices (required).

• Company Performance Bonus
• Flexible Working Agreements where applicable
• Private Healthcare Scheme + Employee Enhanced Assistance
• Enhanced Family Leave - Maternity, Shared Parental & Adoption Leave: up to 6 months at full pay and 6 months at half pay
• Paternity leave: up to 4 weeks at full pay
• Subsidised Gym Membership
• Annual Travel Card Loan & Ride to Work Scheme
• Life Assurance (x3 salary)
• Contributory Pension Plan
• Virgin Family: Giving you access to exclusive Virgin offers and experiences
• Thursday drinks in the office and regular socials

LiveScore Group is a sports media and betting company, home to the LiveScore, LiveScore Bet and Virgin Bet brands. Its flagship LiveScore product delivers real-time scores and free live streams to a large global audience, while LiveScore Bet and Virgin Bet provide online sports betting and gaming. Headquartered in London, the privately owned group operates internationally, with offices in Stoke, Galway, Vienna, Gibraltar, Lagos, Malta and Cape Town. It combines media reach with regulated betting products across the UK and other markets.

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