Principal Data Engineer

Our client, a leading global data analytics firm, is seeking a highly experienced and strategic Principal Data Engineer to join their fully remote team. This is a permanent, full-time position offering the ultimate flexibility to work from anywhere within South Africa . As a Principal Data Engineer, you will be responsible for designing, building, and maintaining scalable and robust data pipelines and infrastructure that support the organization's big data initiatives. You will provide technical leadership, mentor other engineers, and drive best practices in data architecture, ETL processes, and data warehousing. This role demands a deep understanding of data modeling, distributed systems, and cloud-based data platforms. The ideal candidate is a seasoned professional with a proven track of architecting and implementing complex data solutions. You will collaborate closely with data scientists, analysts, and business stakeholders to ensure data availability, quality, and accessibility for critical decision-making. This is an exceptional opportunity to shape the data landscape of a major organization.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build, and optimize scalable data pipelines and ETL/ELT processes.
• Develop and maintain data warehousing solutions and data lake architectures.
• Ensure data quality, integrity, and reliability across all data systems.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to data engineering teams.
• Architect and implement data solutions on cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Work with big data technologies such as Spark, Hadoop, and Kafka.
• Develop and enforce data governance policies and standards.
• Collaborate with data scientists and analysts to meet their data needs.
• Automate data infrastructure operations and monitoring.
• Stay abreast of emerging data engineering technologies and best practices.

Requirements

• Master's or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related quantitative field.
• 8+ years of experience in data engineering or a related role.
• Proven experience designing and implementing large-scale data architectures.
• Expertise in SQL and experience with various database technologies (relational and NoSQL).
• Proficiency with big data technologies such as Apache Spark, Hadoop, Hive, or Kafka.
• Strong programming skills in Python, Scala, or Java.
• Extensive experience with cloud data services (e.g., AWS Redshift, S3, EMR; Azure Data Lake; GCP BigQuery).
• Experience with data modeling and warehousing concepts.
• Strong understanding of data governance and data security principles.
• Excellent leadership, communication, and problem-solving skills.
• Demonstrated experience working in a fully remote, collaborative environment.