Lead Data Engineer

CT&C

Permanent

White City, London

Hiring range: £90,000 - £100,000

For more information please email TalkingCareers@itv.com

 

Your work matters to millions.

Shaping culture is in the DNA of ITV. So, it’s not surprising that you’ll find us in every home in the UK, our productions are famous all over the world and we’re at the forefront of the digital streaming revolution. 

When you join us, you enter a fun working environment. With opportunities to learn, to grow and make a real difference. Small enough that your impact’s felt in the business, but big enough that your impact reaches millions of people. 

Come develop your skills, change TV and the course of your career. Don’t just watch it. Be part of it. Join ITV.

 

Your impact sends ripples.

The role

As a Lead Data Engineer, both directly and via your team of data engineers, you will be responsible for developing, maintaining, and optimising our data pipeline infrastructure using our proprietary central data platform, which is based on Databricks. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams to design and implement scalable data solutions, ensuring efficient data ingestion, transformation, storage, and analysis.

This role offers the chance to lead impactful projects, work with cutting-edge technologies, and shape the future of data engineering at ITV. If you’re passionate about data, leadership, and innovation, we’d love to hear from you!

Key responsibilities

• Lead and Inspire: Take charge of a talented team of data engineers, providing technical leadership, mentorship, and fostering a collaborative environment. Drive productivity, set clear objectives, and support professional growth while contributing to performance reviews and recruitment
  
  
• Design & Build Scalable Data Solutions: Own the end-to-end design, development, and maintenance of cutting-edge data pipelines and infrastructure using Databricks. Innovate with new approaches, ensuring efficient data ingestion, transformation, and storage at scale
  
  
• Collaborate Across Teams: Work closely with cross-functional teams, including data scientists, analysts, and commercial stakeholders, to define data product requirements and deliver impactful data visualisation solutions
  
  
• Performance & Quality Assurance: Monitor and optimise data pipelines for peak performance and reliability. Implement automated quality processes to ensure data accuracy and report outcomes through advanced observability tools
  
  
• Governance & Security: Champion data governance practices, ensuring compliance with data privacy and security regulations. Establish access controls, encryption, and retention policies to safeguard sensitive information
  
  
• Continuous Improvement: Stay ahead of industry trends, identifying opportunities for innovation and automation. Engage with the ITV Symphony team to drive feature enhancements and contribute to the broader data engineering community.

 

Personal Qualities

• Leadership: you will inspire and influence others to work towards a common goal and create confidence in delivering work in a timely manner
  
  
• Delivery: known as a problem solver you will have a passion for aligning with, and promoting, the team’s ways of working. You will ensure your team is always productive and delivering value
  
  
• Technology outlook: a strong interest in evolving and changing technology approaches and tooling and how to meaningfully apply them to achieve improvements in productivity and quality
  
  
• Alignment approach: an eagerness to lead the discovery and decision process regarding tech choices, building alignment and promoting best practice within the engineering organisation

• T-shaped orientation: through collaboration you will consider and promote the needs of product management, product design, quality assurance, service management, support, change management and customer success
  
  
• Influence: You are experienced and confident in guiding your team, and the wider team, towards establishing a common understanding of goals and gaining acceptance of fresh concepts.
  
• Outcome/Process Balance: you are a structured and process-oriented thinker, yet remain flexible and adaptable to effectively deliver desired outcomes and results
  
  
• Agile mindset: you embrace change and are willing to adapt to evolving requirements, as well as seek to promote continuous improvement both in your own work and that of the team.

 

Qualifications and Skills

• Experience in leading a small team of data engineers
• Extensive knowledge as a Data Engineer
• Demonstrable success in designing and building Databricks/Snowflake/GCP Big Data/Hadoop (Cloudera/HortonWorks)/Spark data products
• Excellent problem-solving, analytical thinking, and troubleshooting skills
• Strong communication and collaboration abilities, with the ability to work effectively in a team environment
• Strong programming skills in languages such as Python (PySpark preferred), Scala, or SQL
• Experience in owning, designing and implementing data pipelines ingesting enterprise levels of data volume. In-depth knowledge of data engineering concepts, data integration, and ETL processes
• Ability to write production-grade code including automated testing
• Experience in deploying code via CI/CD platforms (e.g. Github Actions, Jenkins)
• Proficiency in working with distributed computing frameworks, such as Apache Spark
• Experience with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and associated services (e.g., S3, Redshift, BigQuery)
• Familiarity with data modelling, database systems, and SQL optimisation techniques

 

Other things we’re looking for (key criteria)

• Knowledge of the UK broadcast industry & broadcast/OTT advertising market
• Knowledge of digital marketing and advertising industry
• Familiar with data design techniques for classification and regression as well as knowledge of A/B testing, experimental design, and general statistical modelling
• Familiarity with architecture disciplines such as Data Mesh Architecture, Data Architecture, BI Architecture and Enterprise Architecture
• Good understanding of data governance, data privacy, and security principles.
• Knowledge of tools across other data management capabilities – data engineering, data governance, data quality, metadata management and master data management
• Knowledge of designing and building out data visualisation solutions based on technology such as: Tableau, AWS QuickSight, Looker, ThoughtSpot

 

ITV is for everyone.

ITV strongly encourages applications for this role from disabled people. As a Disability Confident Leader, if you meet the minimum criteria for a role and you have declared that you are disabled, we’ll guarantee to take you to the next stage* (minimum criteria above).

We're happy to discuss any support/personalisation you may need during our application and selection process as part of our reasonable adjustments. Drop us a line if you require anything at talkingcareers@itv.com. 

Find out more about applying with a disability.

* There may be a few exceptions where we are not able to take all eligible candidates to the next stage due to the volume of applications.

 

Because those who make an impact deserve to be rewarded for it.

ITV offers some great rewards and benefits including:

• Flexible working with a range of options
• Generous holiday allowance, plus you can buy more
• Annual bonus opportunity
• Competitive pension contribution
• Save as you earn - with an opportunity to buy ITV shares
• Wellbeing and volunteering days plus a wide range of opportunities to help you live a balanced and healthy life
  

 

More about our benefits 

Closing date: Friday 21st March 2025