About Principal Data Engineer – Data Platforms / Data Lakes / Cloud / Python – 6-Month Contract – £625 p/d Inside IR35 – London A global digital media organisation are looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join their Data Foundation & Product Analytics team on an initial 12-month contract. This role sits at the forefront of enterprise data strategy, engineering, and platform governance — and will be instrumental in shaping the next generation of data infrastructure within the business. This is a hybrid role (London-based) with flexibility in a fast-paced, multi-cloud, multiplatform environment. You will partner with the Enterprise Data Lake and Governance teams, architecting robust data pipelines and platforms across cloud and on-prem ecosystems, whilst establishing and enforcing standards for data modelling, ensuring consistency in data quality. Key Responsibilities: Architect and lead the development of large-scale, secure, and resilient data lakes and pipelines using Data Lakes and Data Mesh concepts. Leading a small team including Developers, Data Scientists, Business Analysts Extensive experience using Python, SQL and AWS Define and enforce data architecture across mesh and domain-driven data products. Implement and govern real-time/batch processing (Kafka, Spark, Glue). Ensure strong metadata, cataloguing, and lineage practices across the enterprise. Lead teams of engineers across global hubs, mentoring and supporting high standards. Knowledge on data governance & security practices such as IAM, RBAC, Collibra, OpenMetadata, GDPR compliance #J-18808-Ljbffr Nice-to-have skills • Python • SQL • AWS • Kafka • Spark • Collibra • London, England, United Kingdom Work experience • Data Engineer • Data Infrastructure Languages • English