Principal Data Engineer (m/f/d)

Principal data engineers at Thoughtworks, are strategic leaders who spearhead data engineering initiatives, tackle complex business challenges and uncover transformative insights. They possess a deep understanding of a client's business ecosystem and partner with executives to align technology strategies with business objectives. By contextualizing emerging trends and Thoughtworks' exploration, they expand the impact of data engineering within the client organization.

They draw upon their profound expertise in developing modern data architectures and infrastructure for the management of data applications.

Effective collaboration is paramount, as data engineers adeptly convey their discoveries to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. They stay abreast of industry advancements, ensure data quality and security, and provide mentorship to junior team members.

At Thoughtworks, data engineers leverage their deep technical knowledge to solve complex business problems, making a significant impact on client success.

Job responsibilities

• You will collaborate with sales and pre-sales to clarify requirements and design viable solutions and drive pursuits with technical stakeholders.
• You will establish a clear vision and direction for the data paradigm/practices, aligning it with the overall business strategy.
• You will collaborate with executive level stakeholders to understand their strategic objectives and identify opportunities to leverage data and data quality.
• You will consult on complex data platform programs, synchronizing cross-cutting architectural concerns and providing client-facing technical leadership and guidance as a data subject matter expert.
• You will be responsible to create, design and develop intricate data processing pipelines, addressing clients' most challenging problems.
• You will collaborate with data scientists to design scalable implementation and production of their models.
• You will write clean and iterative code based on TDD and leverage various continuous delivery practices to deploy, support and operate data pipelines.
• You will design and implement the strategy around data governance, data security and data privacy to support business and compliance requirements.
• You will represent Thoughtworks in various online and offline forums, including events and conferences.

Job qualifications

Technical Skills

• You must have extensive pre-sales experience and a proven ability to independently drive complex pursuits and create winning commercial proposals.
• You have experience leading enterprise data strategy, system design, and the end-to-end implementation of large-scale technical solutions.
• You are a native-level German speaker (C1) who is comfortable driving consensus and managing expectations with senior technical stakeholders.
• You possess hands-on experience in system design using Domain-Driven Design principles for complex enterprise organizations with multiple domains.
• Working with data excites you; you have designed Big Data architectures, built and operated data pipelines, and managed data storage within distributed systems.
• You have a deep understanding of data modeling and practical experience with modern data engineering tools, platforms, and cloud warehousing solutions.
• You are a "hands-on" leader—equally happy writing production-grade code as you are leading a team to implement a vision.
• You have built and deployed large-scale data pipelines and data-centric applications using distributed storage and processing platforms in production environments.
• You have experience designing and developing streaming solutions (Cloud or On-premise) leveraging leading technologies and industry best practices.
• You have experience implementing data governance and security policies, complemented by a solid understanding of MLOps and data science concepts.

Professional Skills

• You understand the importance of stakeholder management and can easily liaise between clients and other key stakeholders throughout projects, ensuring buy-in and gaining trust along the way.
• You are resilient in ambiguous situations and can adapt your role to approach challenges from multiple perspectives.
• You don’t shy away from risks or conflicts, instead you take them on and skillfully manage them.
• You coach, mentor and motivate others and you aspire to influence teammates to take positive action and accountability for their work.
• You enjoy influencing others and always advocate for technical excellence while being open to change when needed.
• You are a proven leader with a track record of encouraging teammates in their professional development and relationships.
• Cultivating strong partnerships comes naturally to you; You understand the importance of relationship building and how it can bring new opportunities to our business.

Other things to know

Learning & Development

There is no one-size-fits-all career path at Thoughtworks: however you want to develop your career is entirely up to you. But we also balance autonomy with the strength of our cultivation culture. This means your career is supported by interactive tools, numerous development programs and teammates who want to help you grow. We see value in helping each other be our best and that extends to empowering our employees in their career journeys.

Responsible Use of AI in Recruitment

At Thoughtworks, we use AI tools to support our recruitment team with administrative tasks such as drafting communications, scheduling interviews and writing job descriptions.

Crucially, our AI tools do not screen, assess, rank or make hiring decisions. Every application is reviewed by our team and all selection decisions are made exclusively by our interviewers and hiring managers.

We are committed to fairness and responsible AI. We actively manage our AI systems by testing, monitoring for biased outcomes and implementing mitigation measures. We hold our third-party vendors to these same high standards through a rigorous governance process. For additional information, please see our full Thoughtworks AI Policy for Recruitment .

About Thoughtworks

Thoughtworks is a dynamic and inclusive community of bright and supportive colleagues who are revolutionizing tech. As a leading technology consultancy, we’re pushing boundaries through our purposeful and impactful work. For 30+ years, we’ve delivered extraordinary impact together with our clients by helping them solve complex business problems with technology as the differentiator. Bring your brilliant expertise and commitment for continuous learning to Thoughtworks. Together, let’s be extraordinary.

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