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Principal Data Engineer (Contract)Hybrid (London-based) | £450-£650/day
A leading scientific and cultural institution is seeking a Principal Data Engineer to design and scale cloud-native data infrastructure powering biodiversity research, digitisation, and AI workflows.
Key Responsibilities-
Architect and build scalable data pipelines for ingestion, transformation, enrichment, and publication.
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Integrate AI/ML workflows, including training data pipelines and inference outputs.
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Lead AWS-based data engineering using services like S3, Lambda, Glue, and Athena.
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Ensure interoperability with global research infrastructures (e.g. DiSSCo UK, RECODE, DToL).
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Define best practices in data quality, metadata, and reproducibility.
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Collaborate with cross-functional teams (science, software, product).
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Mentor engineers and contribute to institutional data strategy and standards.
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Strong Python skills; experience with Airflow, Luigi, or Spark.
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Proven track record building robust, scalable ETL/ELT systems.
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Experience with scientific, semi-structured, or biodiversity data.
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Familiarity with semantic web standards (e.g. Darwin Core, JSON-LD, Linked Data).
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Knowledge of NoSQL/graph databases (e.g. MongoDB, Neo4j, Neptune) a plus.
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Hands-on with cloud-native architectures, especially AWS.
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Understanding of data versioning, provenance, and governance.
Robert Walters Operations Limited is an employment business and employment agency and welcomes applications from all candidates
