Practice and people

• Mentoring and growing Lead and Senior Data Engineers — through code review, pairing, architecture sessions, and career conversations
• Building CreateFuture's data engineering playbook: reusable patterns, accelerators, and reference architectures that reduce time-to-value on new engagements
• Contributing to hiring — defining what great looks like for data engineering roles and playing an active part in assessment
• Representing CreateFuture externally — at industry events, in technical blog posts, and in client-facing settings — as a credible voice on data engineering
• Working closely with the Head of Data to enable the growth of the right skills and capabilities to meet client needs.

Commercial

• Shaping and leading technical responses to opportunities — scoping complex engagements, writing architecture proposals, and presenting to senior client stakeholders
• Identifying expansion opportunities within existing client relationships — spotting data engineering problems we can help solve and framing them as propositions
• Partnering with cloud providers on joint go-to-market activity where relevant, leveraging CreateFuture's partner status

What We're Looking For

Consulting background

• You've spent a significant part of your career in a consultancy, professional services, or client-facing delivery environment — you know how to build trust quickly, work across ambiguous or fast-changing requirements, and deliver under commercial pressure
• You're comfortable moving between clients and industries, ramping up on new domains quickly rather than relying on years of embedded context
• You've shaped and sold technical work — writing proposals, scoping engagements, and presenting architecture decisions to client stakeholders
• You understand the difference between "good engineering" and "good engineering for this client, this budget, this timeline" — and can navigate that trade-off transparently

Cloud data engineering mastery

• You can design across the full data engineering stack — from ingestion and streaming through to warehousing, serving, and cost optimisation — on a major cloud platform (AWS strongly preferred)
• You have deep experience with streaming architectures — Kinesis, Kafka/MSK, Flink, or Spark Streaming — and know when each is the right choice
• You can model the cost implications of architecture decisions and advise clients on trade-offs between throughput, latency, durability, and spend
• Cloud certification at professional or specialty level is strongly preferred

Engineering excellence

• Mastery of Python, SQL, and Spark — and strong opinions on how they should be used in production data pipelines
• Deep experience with dbt, Airflow, or equivalent orchestration — including how to build pipelines that are testable, observable, and operationally sound
• Strong understanding of data quality engineering — not just validation rules, but how to build systems that detect and surface integrity issues before they reach consumers
• Comfortable with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, AWS CDK) and treating data platform infrastructure as a first-class engineering concern

Leadership

• You've operated at Principal or equivalent level — making architectural decisions that affect multiple teams, and being accountable for their outcomes
• You're comfortable in C-suite and VP-level client conversations, translating technical complexity into business risk and opportunity
• You can hold a room on a difficult technical topic and reach a decision — not just present options
• You've grown engineering talent around you and take it seriously as a leadership responsibility

What We’ll Offer You

We trust people to do their best work. That means flexibility over rigid rules, impact over activity, and real investment in your growth both professionally and personally. You’ll be part of a supportive, and friendly culture, surrounded by smart, curious people who care deeply about what they do.

We offer flexible working, including hybrid and remote options. Our office hubs are located in Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, London and Bulgaria, with occasional travel to client sites or CreateFuture offices when needed.

We trust you to manage your time balancing collaboration with client time and focused work. What matters is the impact you have, not how busy you look.

Our hiring process

We try to keep our hiring process clear, fair and respectful of your time. We aim to get back to everyone who applies and we will be upfront about where you are in the process.

It Usually Looks Like This

• Call with our Talent Acquisition Team
• Role specific capability interview

Depending on the role, we might also ask you to do a short presentation, a practical or technical task or have a values focused conversation. We will explain what is involved before anything happens.

Inclusion at CreateFuture

We believe diverse teams build better workplaces and better products. We want CreateFuture to be a place where people feel able to be themselves and do their best work.

If you need any adjustments or support during the application process, just. We will do what we can to help.

We look forward to your application!