Staff Data Platform Engineer

Staff Data Platform Engineer
Large-scale data/Cloud infrastructure | ClickHouse / OLAP | Technical Leadership
No Sponsorship Option
London or Oxford, X2 per week
£100,000-£130,000

We're looking for a Staff Data Platform Engineer to take technical ownership of a large-scale analytical data platform, tackling complex infrastructure challenges and shaping the foundations for the next generation of AI-driven products.
This is a hands-on technical leadership role for someone who enjoys innovating at the limits of what data infrastructure can do. You'll lead platform architecture, drive performance and efficiency improvements, develop a scalable Data-as-a-Service offering, and help a small team deliver highly reliable systems.

The Role
Large-scale data engineering: Design, optimise and scale multi-tenant ClickHouse or equivalent OLAP platforms, tackling complex challenges across sharding, replication, materialised views, query performance and cost efficiency.
Platform reliability: Build automation, observability and intelligent capacity management to improve resilience, reduce operational overhead and enable data-intensive systems to scale efficiently.
Data-as-a-Service: Shape the architecture of a secure, multi-tenant data platform, enabling immutable data releases, discoverability and efficient access to complex datasets.
AI infrastructure: Build the data foundations that support agentic AI systems, working closely with ML engineers to enable secure, scalable and reliable access to platform data.
Security by design: Establish robust tenant isolation, least-privilege access controls and credential management across the platform.
Technical leadership: Set architectural direction, establish engineering standards, mentor other engineers and line-manage a small team while remaining hands-on with the technology.What We're Looking For
Deep expertise in ClickHouse or comparable OLAP technologies, ideally with experience operating multi-tenant analytical systems at significant scale.
Strong understanding of database internals, query optimisation, distributed architectures, sharding and replication. Experience contributing to open-source database projects or working at source-code level would be highly advantageous.
A proven track record building scalable, observable and resilient data platforms, with a focus on automation and operational efficiency.
Experience developing data platforms as products, including multi-tenancy, secure data distribution, immutable releases and large-scale data discovery.
An understanding of how to expose data securely to AI agents and other automated systems, including access controls, isolation and guardrails.
Strong knowledge of platform security, secrets management and least-privilege principles.
The ability to influence technical strategy, mentor engineers and lead a small team without stepping away from hands-on engineering.The OpportunityThis is an opportunity to take ownership of a technically ambitious data platform, solve infrastructure problems at significant scale and influence the architecture underpinning data-intensive and AI-powered products.
We're looking for someone who leads through technical expertise, enjoys solving problems that don't have obvious answers, and wants to make a lasting impact on how a platform evolves