Data Engineering Lead

Location: Icon 1, WA15 0AF

About Central Functions

Central Functions is formed of the teams and people that serve the entire business. These people are integral to the smooth running of the business; ensuring everyone is paid on time, that materials are sourced and arrive promptly, that we meet our legal obligations and that our health, safety, and security is safeguarded.

Why be the Data Engineering Lead at THG? 

THG is building the data engineering capability that will underpin everything from daily trading analytics to AI-driven personalisation. As Engineering Lead, you will own the technical vision and delivery for how THG structures, stores and distributes its data across three core domains: Customer, Commercial and Operations.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You will be managing and mentoring a team of six engineers (three Senior, three mid-level, each domain-aligned), but you are also expected to be technically deep — setting architecture standards, making key design decisions, and being the person the team turns to when problems are hard.

Your primary mission is to move THG from a fragmented, siloed data landscape towards consistent, joined-up domain datasets that can be trusted and used at scale. We have customer data in multiple places, commercial data that isn't consistently structured, and operational data that isn't easy to consume. You will build the engineering foundation that changes that — working to a shared architecture that ensures Customer, Commercial and Operations datasets have consistent standards, shared attributes where appropriate, and can ultimately be joined into a single, reliable view of the business.

You will work closely with Ingenuity, our technology partner, who manage the foundational platform and first-layer pipelines. Your job is to take what Ingenuity provides and shape it into the structured, high-quality domain datasets that analytics and data science teams can confidently build on. You will also be a key partner to the Data Governance Lead, implementing the standards they define within your engineering practice.

What you'll do:

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Own the data engineering architecture for THG — defining how data is ingested, transformed, stored and made available across Customer, Commercial and Operations domains
• Design consistent standards and patterns across all three domains — ensuring shared attributes are handled uniformly and that data can be reliably joined across domains
• Lead the evolution of our BigQuery/GCP platform — driving migrations, modernising legacy pipelines, and building for scalability
• Make key architectural decisions and be accountable for the technical quality of everything the engineering team produces
• Develop and enforce engineering standards across the team — version control, testing frameworks, error handling, documentation and code review practices

Domain Dataset Development

• Lead the build-out of structured, reliable domain datasets — moving from disparate, siloed data sources towards consolidated Customer, Commercial and Operations data platforms
• Work towards the foundations of a single source of truth — defining how data from different source systems is reconciled, deduplicated and mastered within each domain
• Ensure domain datasets are structured for downstream consumption — analytics teams, data science models, BI tooling and AI/agent use cases should all be able to reliably consume what engineering produces

AI-Enabled Engineering

• Champion the use of AI in data engineering — this is a small team with a large remit, and we expect AI-assisted development to be embedded in how we work
• Apply AI tools to accelerate pipeline development, automated testing, anomaly detection and data quality monitoring
• Stay current with AI developments in the data engineering space and bring new approaches into the team's practice

Ingenuity Relationship

• Work closely with the Ingenuity engineering team — understanding what they provide at the platform layer and building effectively on top of it
• Define clear requirements and interface standards for how Ingenuity data feeds into PLC domain datasets
• Identify and escalate where Ingen platform behaviour affects data quality or availability within PLC domains

People & Team

• Manage, coach and develop a team of six domain-aligned engineers — three Senior Data Engineers and three Data Engineers
• Run a structured review and development process for each engineer, building their technical capability and career progression
• Foster a culture of engineering excellence, collaboration and continuous improvement

What skills and experience do I need for this role?

Essential

• Hands-on, expert-level experience with BigQuery and GCP — this is non-negotiable; you must have built and operated production data pipelines on this stack
• Strong Python skills — used daily for pipeline development, data transformation and automation
• Experience across at least two of the three core data domains: Customer, Commercial and Operations
• A track record of evolving data architecture — you can demonstrate concrete examples of how you changed the way a business structures, stores or consumes its data
• Deep understanding of data modelling, pipeline design and distributed data architecture
• Experience with Dataform or dbt for data transformation
• Demonstrated use of AI in data engineering — AI-assisted pipeline development, automated quality checks, or similar practical applications
• Experience mentoring and developing engineers

Desirable

• Experience building towards a Customer Data Platform (CDP) or equivalent customer data consolidation project
• Familiarity with data governance principles and working alongside a governance function
• E-commerce or retail background
• Experience with streaming or real-time data pipelines

What’s in it for me?

Career Development

• Access bespoke development programmes that have been designed and developed by our in-house L&D team.
• Continued development through our upskilling programme that is delivered in partnership with an industry-leading training provider.

Enhanced Leave

• 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays.
• Don’t want to work on your birthday? We don’t either! Enjoy your day off on us!
• Enhanced maternity and paternity pay, depending on length of service.
• Up to 10 days compassionate leave.
• Buy back up to 3 days each year.
• Unlock 2 days volunteer leave after 12-months.

Wellbeing Support

• Access face-to-face and virtual appointments with our in-house GP.
• Access to our subsidised on-site dentist.
• Access our 247 Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) which is provided by Bupa.
• State-of-the-art on-site gym.
• Access to our on-site physio.

Other Perks

• Save up to 12% on the cost of personal tech through our salary sacrifice scheme.
• Subsidised bus pass from Manchester City Centre to our ICON office.
• Up to 50% staff discount on THG brands.
• On-site staff shop.
• Know someone who would be perfect for THG? Refer them and get up to £1000 when they pass their probation.
• Anniversary gifts when you hit 5 and 10 years of service.

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