Data Engineer

Title: Data Engineer
Location: London — minimum three days in the office per week
Salary Range: Competitive; range to be confirmed
Type: Permanent / Hybrid

Overview

An opportunity to build reliable data products that support underwriting insight and business decision-making within a global specialty insurer.

Working closely with business stakeholders and technical colleagues, you will design, develop and support production data pipelines on Snowflake using dbt Cloud. You will balance delivery priorities with consistent engineering standards, helping translate complex requirements into scalable, secure and well‑documented solutions.

The role offers ownership across the full delivery lifecycle, from shaping requirements and designing models through to deployment, optimisation and ongoing production support.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build and maintain pipelines that ingest data from internal and external sources into Snowflake.
• Develop, test and document data models and products using dbt Cloud and layered architectural principles, including Medallion Architecture.
• Work with underwriting, actuarial, operations and other stakeholders to translate business priorities into clear, deliverable requirements.
• Constructively challenge unclear requirements or approaches that conflict with platform standards, offering practical alternatives.
• Reuse shared data models and maintain consistent engineering practices, escalating design decisions with wider architectural implications.
• Manage expectations around scope, priorities and timelines through transparent estimation and clear communication of trade‑offs.
• Participate in agile planning, refinement, reviews and retrospectives, contributing to the development of the data‑product roadmap.
• Implement testing, validation and monitoring to maintain data quality and reliability.
• Investigate and resolve production pipeline failures and data issues.
• Contribute to Git‑based version control, pull requests, peer reviews and CI/CD processes.
• Optimise Snowflake performance and cost while maintaining security and operational reliability.
• Maintain technical documentation and share knowledge to improve engineering practices.
• Ensure all solutions meet applicable data governance, security and regulatory requirements.

What We’re Looking For

• Substantial data engineering experience across multiple full delivery lifecycles, from discovery and requirements through to production support.
• Strong hands‑on experience building production pipelines and data models on Snowflake .
• Commercial experience with dbt Cloud , including models, tests, macros, incremental strategies, snapshots, environments and jobs.
• Advanced SQL skills and strong knowledge of dimensional modelling, slowly changing dimensions and layered data architectures.
• Experience delivering within agile environments, ideally with a data‑product approach.
• Strong stakeholder‑management skills, including the confidence to challenge requirements and explain technical trade‑offs constructively.
• Experience working within embedded or matrix structures while maintaining shared engineering standards.
• Practical experience with Git, pull requests, code reviews and CI/CD for data.
• A sound understanding of data quality, testing and governance.
• The ability to independently deliver production‑ready, well‑documented data assets.

Desirable but Not Essential

• Insurance experience, particularly specialty insurance or London Market underwriting data, or experience in another regulated industry.
• Familiarity with policy administration, claims or billing‑system data.
• Experience supporting Power BI, Tableau, Looker or similar analytics tools.
• Knowledge of Snowflake security and access‑control patterns.
• SnowPro Core or Advanced certification.
• Experience mentoring or supporting other engineers.

About the Company

A well‑established global specialty insurer with deep technical expertise and a strong financial foundation. The business combines a collaborative, people‑focused culture with an emphasis on innovation and sustainable growth. This opportunity supports its continued development of trusted data capabilities and more effective, insight‑led decision‑making.