Principal Data Engineer - Contract
⭐ - Featured Role | Apply direct with Data Freelance Hub
This role is for a Principal Data Engineer on a contract basis, hybrid in London, with a pay rate of £450-£650/day. Key skills include strong Python, AWS services, ETL systems, and experience with biodiversity data.
🌎 - Country
United Kingdom
💱 - Currency
£ GBP
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💰 - Day rate
-
🗓️ - Date discovered
August 8, 2025
🕒 - Project duration
Unknown
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🏝️ - Location type
Hybrid
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📄 - Contract type
Unknown
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🔒 - Security clearance
Unknown
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📍 - Location detailed
London
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🧠 - Skills detailed
#Data Quality #"ETL (Extract #Transform #Load)" #Lambda (AWS Lambda) #Scala #Databases #Cloud #Python #Airflow #Graph Databases #Data Pipeline #S3 (Amazon Simple Storage Service) #ML (Machine Learning) #Strategy #JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) #Athena #MongoDB #Data Engineering #NoSQL #Spark (Apache Spark) #Luigi #AI (Artificial Intelligence) #AWS (Amazon Web Services) #Data Strategy #Metadata #Neo4J
Role description
Principal Data Engineer (Contract)
Hybrid (London-based) | £450-£650/day
A leading scientific and cultural institution is seeking a Principal Data Engineer to design and scale cloud-native data infrastructure powering biodiversity research, digitisation, and AI workflows. Key Responsibilities
• Architect and build scalable data pipelines for ingestion, transformation, enrichment, and publication.
• Integrate AI/ML workflows, including training data pipelines and inference outputs.
• Lead AWS-based data engineering using services like S3, Lambda, Glue, and Athena.
• Ensure interoperability with global research infrastructures (e.g. DiSSCo UK, RECODE, DToL).
• Define best practices in data quality, metadata, and reproducibility.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (science, software, product).
• Mentor engineers and contribute to institutional data strategy and standards. Tech Requirements
• Strong Python skills; experience with Airflow, Luigi, or Spark.
• Proven track record building robust, scalable ETL/ELT systems.
• Experience with scientific, semi-structured, or biodiversity data.
• Familiarity with semantic web standards (e.g. Darwin Core, JSON-LD, Linked Data).
• Knowledge of NoSQL/graph databases (e.g. MongoDB, Neo4j, Neptune) a plus.
• Hands-on with cloud-native architectures, especially AWS.
• Understanding of data versioning, provenance, and governance.
Robert Walters Operations Limited is an employment business and employment agency and welcomes applications from all candidates
Principal Data Engineer (Contract)
Hybrid (London-based) | £450-£650/day
A leading scientific and cultural institution is seeking a Principal Data Engineer to design and scale cloud-native data infrastructure powering biodiversity research, digitisation, and AI workflows. Key Responsibilities
• Architect and build scalable data pipelines for ingestion, transformation, enrichment, and publication.
• Integrate AI/ML workflows, including training data pipelines and inference outputs.
• Lead AWS-based data engineering using services like S3, Lambda, Glue, and Athena.
• Ensure interoperability with global research infrastructures (e.g. DiSSCo UK, RECODE, DToL).
• Define best practices in data quality, metadata, and reproducibility.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (science, software, product).
• Mentor engineers and contribute to institutional data strategy and standards. Tech Requirements
• Strong Python skills; experience with Airflow, Luigi, or Spark.
• Proven track record building robust, scalable ETL/ELT systems.
• Experience with scientific, semi-structured, or biodiversity data.
• Familiarity with semantic web standards (e.g. Darwin Core, JSON-LD, Linked Data).
• Knowledge of NoSQL/graph databases (e.g. MongoDB, Neo4j, Neptune) a plus.
• Hands-on with cloud-native architectures, especially AWS.
• Understanding of data versioning, provenance, and governance.
Robert Walters Operations Limited is an employment business and employment agency and welcomes applications from all candidates
