Principal Data Engineer

Join Smoove and Revolutionize the Home Moving Experience as a Principal Data Engineer!

Are you passionate about data and its power to transform industries? Do you thrive in a fast-paced, innovative environment? Smoove, a proud member of the PEXA Group, is seeking a highly skilled and motivated Principal Data Engineer to lead the technical strategy of our data platform. At Smoove, we’re on a mission to simplify and revolutionize the home moving and ownership experience for everyone by removing the pain points and uncertainties that plague the current process.

Why Smoove?

We’re more than just a company; we’re a team of dedicated individuals working together to achieve outstanding results. We foster a transparent and open-door environment where diverse talent can flourish. As a leading provider of tech in the property sector, we’re expanding rapidly, and we’re looking for ambitious individuals to join us.

About the Role

As our Principal Data Engineer, you will be a key player in shaping the future of our data landscape. This is a hands-on leadership role where you will define, lead, and scale the technical strategy of our data platform, ensuring data is secure, compliant, discoverable, and business-ready. You’ll be instrumental in empowering our analysts, data scientists, and stakeholders to make confident, data-driven decisions. You will own the end-to-end quality, performance, and scalability of our data systems, from raw ingestion to trusted datasets powering business-critical analytics and reporting. This includes setting standards and influencing the strategic roadmap for data infrastructure. You will work at the intersection of architecture, governance, and engineering excellence.

Our tech stack leverages both AWS and Azure, with Databricks as a central component. You will be responsible for leading the evolution of this ecosystem to meet our growing business needs.

Responsibilities:

• Design and oversee scalable, performant, and secure architectures on Databricks and distributed systems.
• Lead the design and development of robust, high-performance data pipelines using PySpark and Databricks.
• Establish and enforce best practices for data governance, lineage, metadata, and security controls.
• Ensure compliance with GDPR and other regulatory frameworks.
• Act as a technical authority and mentor, guiding data engineers.
• Partner with product, engineering, and business leaders to prioritize and deliver high-impact data initiatives.
• Build a culture of data trust, ensuring downstream analytics and reporting are always accurate and consistent.
• Evaluate and recommend emerging technologies where they add value to the ecosystem.

Skills and Experience:

• Extensive experience as a Data Engineer, including technical leadership.
• Broad cloud experience, ideally with both Azure and AWS.
• Deep expertise in PySpark and distributed data processing at scale.
• Extensive experience designing and optimizing in Databricks.
• Advanced SQL optimization and schema design for analytical workloads.
• Strong understanding of data security, privacy, and GDPR/PII compliance.
• Proven experience leading the design and operation of a complex data platform.
• Track record of mentoring engineers and raising technical standards.
• Strategic mindset with a holistic view of data reliability, scalability, and business value.

Salary & Benefits

We offer a competitive salary range of £70,000 – £90,000 per year, commensurate with experience.

Ready to Join Smoove?

If you’re a highly motivated and experienced Data Engineer looking to make a real impact, we encourage you to apply! Help us transform the home moving experience for everyone. Please mention the word WISELY and tag RMTk4LjU0LjExNC41NA== when applying to show you read the job post completely (#RMTk4LjU0LjExNC41NA==).

Important Information:

To be conducted as part of post-offer employment checks: The personal information we have collected from you will be shared with Cifas who will use it to prevent fraud, other unlawful or dishonest conduct, malpractice, and other seriously improper conduct. If any of these are detected, you could be refused certain services or employment. Your personal information will also be used to verify your identity. Further details of how your information will be used by us and Cifas, and your data protection rights, can be found at Cifas.

GDPR Compliance: Digital Completion UK Limited (trading name “PEXA”), Optima Legal Services Limited (trading name “Optima Legal”) and Smoove Limited (a holding company which comprises of the following wholly owned trading Subsidiary companies: United Legal Services Limited, United Home Services Limited, Legal-Eye Limited, and Amity Law Limited) are all owned directly by DigCom UK Holdings Limited, which is a wholly owned Subsidiary of PEXA Group Limited in Australia (ACN 140 677 792; ASX: PXA) (referred to collectively as “PEXA Group”). When we process your applicant personal data for recruitment purposes, we do so as a controller. If as part of the recruitment process, we share your personal data with another company within the PEXA Group, that company may process your personal data as either an independent controller or, in certain circumstances, a joint controller. By applying for this role, you consent to us processing your personal data in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (“UK GDPR”) and the Data Protection Act 2018, and further information can be found in our privacy notice https://pexa.co.uk/applicant-policy/.