Principal Data Platform Engineer

Who we're looking for

At Schroders, our Principal Data Platform Engineer is tasked with establishing and integrating a variety of innovative technologies, into a coherent set of data platform services to serve our data practitioners including data engineering and data science. This is an opportunity to use your cloud engineering skills as a Senior member of a team of data engineers to design and deliver solutions for our multiple business lines. 

As an experienced platform engineer, you'll need to have a solid practical understanding of how to formulate, configure, integrate and test the platform, and are ideally from a computer science or applied science/engineering background, although relevant industry experience is equally valuable and will be taken into consideration. 

This is an exciting opportunity to really shape and develop this offering, and be a part of not just the implementation, but the evolution of this next generation platform. 

About Schroders

We're a global investment manager. We help institutions, intermediaries and individuals around the world invest money to meet their goals, fulfil their ambitions, and prepare for the future.

We have around 5,000 people on six continents. And we've been around for over 200 years but keep adapting as society and technology changes. What doesn't change is our commitment to helping our clients, and society, prosper.

Technology at Schroders

There's a huge amount of change going on at Schroders. Technology's shaping our business more and more, so there are many opportunities waiting to be grabbed. And because we're a big financial player, we can put hefty backing behind good ideas.

We're a serious business – we have enormous responsibilities to our clients and shareholders. But just because we're suited and booted, that doesn't make us stuffy; our tech teams are friendlier and more informal than you might expect.

The base

We moved into our new HQ in the City of London in 2018. We're close to our clients, in the heart of the UK's financial centre. And we have everything we need to work flexibly.

The team

You will be part of the Enterprise Data team who are creating a platform that is democratising data access and usage across the organisation and enabling our business to build greater insights than we've ever been able to before. 

This team is at the forefront of the execution of our technology strategy and being a platform team, many teams are dependent on it for the latest features it develops. Transparency and clear communication about what is happening in the team is a critical and large part of the role.

There are currently nine teams in the Enterprise Data Space; five teams working on the data platform roadmap, two teams acting as service teams on top of the platform and two teams working to decommission a legacy platform in this space. 

The platform teams are just starting to use flow metrics, roadmaps and delivery plans and iterating on their ways of working to grow their maturity. 

What you'll do

• Work as part of the team to help rationalise and integrate a variety of data technologies. The critical skill will be in understanding the outcomes that data engineers and data scientists are trying to achieve.
• Create new services that will tie together formerly disparate processes into blocks that can be assembled into patterns to form an effective and efficient process.
• Own end-to-end pipelines and destinations for the transfer and storage of all data.
• Support the strategic migration of enterprise applications and analytics to Snowflake. 
• Assist in evolution of the creation of a modern, group-wide data platform based on the data mesh paradigm.
• You'll be comfortable with agile methodology, either scrum or Kanban, having worked in teams that use this approach. As a team, we support each other in our personal development knowing that each has their strengths, and work to share those throughout the team. 
• Develop deep partnerships with other engineering and product teams to deliver on major cross-functional initiatives.
• You may be asked to speak on behalf of and represent the community to large audiences inside and outside of Schroders.

The knowledge, experience and qualifications you need

• Strong Python and SQL coding skills
• Proficiency in Snowflake data platform concepts such as establishing RBAC controls, managing virtual warehouses, optimizing query performance, and utilizing advanced features.
• Experience standing up data platforms, either open source or integration of 3rd party cloud or SaaS services
• Good understanding of distributed systems, APIs, cloud computing patterns, virtualisation/ containerisation
• Experience of infrastructure as code tools, and CI/CD / general DevOps experience
• Familiar with a variety of cloud-native data stores
• Cost management on cloud
• Experienced with tools such as DBT, Airflow, Collibra, GraphQL, and StreamSets
• Hybrid architectures (Cloud/on-premises) and multi-cloud
• Good knowledge of agile methodology, and capable of following the framework, contributing to team success through participation in ceremonies and occasionally assisting with Scrum Master duties, owning retro actions, and maintaining scrum artefacts
• Good knowledge of source control (GitHub especially) and working on a shared codebase
• Familiarity with security controls and experience interacting with information security teams to ensure the solution is suitably secured and controlled
• Experience creating large-scale data engineering pipelines, data-based decision-making and quantitative analysis tools and software.

The knowledge, experience and qualifications that will help

• Knowledge of the Asset management industry.
• Educated to undergraduate or higher level in a numerate or applied science subject, but relevant industry experience will be equally valuable, and considered.
• Azure/AWS data engineering, Snowflake certifications. 
• Experience with data platforms including cache management, scheduling, performance, and tuning of queries
• Experience with Data Warehousing technology stacks.

What you'll be like

• Friendly, approachable and a collaborative team player who enjoys working with people across the business and can act as a mentor to more junior colleagues when required.
• Self-motivated, someone who shows initiative often and is keen to help the team improve engineering processes across Schroders.
• You have a continuous improvement mindset and seek to optimise where necessary.
• You can understand the environment and prioritise the most important or high value tasks using available data to inform planning and prioritisation.
• A continuous learner - always willing to spend time learning and developing your technical skills on our current tool suite and related disciplines such as data modelling and architecture. 
• You hold yourself accountable, dealing fairly with everyone and demonstrating integrity.

We recognise potential, whoever you are

Our purpose is to provide excellent investment performance to clients through active management. Diversity of thought facilitated by an inclusive culture will allow us to make better decisions and better achieve our purpose. This is why inclusion and diversity are a strategic priority for us and why we are an equal opportunities employer: you are welcome here regardless of your age, disability, gender identity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, socio-economic background or any other protected characteristics.