Staff Data Engineer

Staff Data Engineer / Technical Lead (Contract) Fully Remote UK Up to £750/day (Inside IR35) Contract until end of 2026 - scope for extension We’re hiring a Staff Data Engineer to join a team working on large-scale B2C data. This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You’ll act as the senior engineering lead for a 7 to 10 person analytics-heavy team, owning the direction of existing data pipelines and infrastructure while remaining deeply involved in coding and delivery. The environment includes a 3 to 4 year old codebase with tightly coupled pipelines and limited documentation. The immediate priority is understanding how systems connect, untangling legacy implementations, and setting clear engineering standards to improve maintainability and development speed. What you’ll be doing • Lead technical direction for customer data pipelines and platform architecture • Refactor and stabilise existing systems, improving readability and structure • Design cleaner system boundaries across a complex, interconnected estate • Remain hands-on with production code • Define engineering guidelines, documentation standards, and best practices • Support and mentor engineers through code reviews and design discussions • Drive improvements that reduce pipeline development time and cost What they’re looking for • Staff or Senior Data Engineer with strong system design experience (especially brownfield) • Proven background leading technical direction without formal people management • Comfortable owning messy legacy systems and driving large refactors • Strong coding skills (language and tooling flexible) • Experience working with high-volume data environments (tens of millions of rows monthly) • Values documentation, clarity, and sustainable engineering practices Contract details • Contract until the end of 2026 - scope for extension • Up to £750/day (inside IR35) • Fully remote across the UK. Interested, or know someone who would be? Click apply or get in touch directly on mgojzewski@trg-uk.com