Staff Engineer - Data

The Staff Engineer provides technical leadership across the Value Stream and Capabilities, supporting architectural alignment, engineering best practices, and scalable delivery.

They collaborate closely with the Principal Engineer, Delivery Lead, Lead Product Owner, and Solution/Enterprise Architects to shape the technical roadmap, oversee the quality of engineering outputs, and support delivery of complex initiatives aligned to target architecture and engineering strategy.

As a champion of engineering excellence, the Staff Engineer drives the adoption of modern design patterns, cloud-native approaches, and continuous improvement initiatives, contributing to Admiral’s long-term technology goals. They also play a key role in mentoring and coaching engineers, supporting capability growth and ensuring consistency in practices across squads.

Main Duties

Leadership

• Provide technical leadership and guidance to engineers across the Value Stream.
• Mentor engineers within your area of expertise to support their technical growth.
• Support the Principal Engineer and senior leadership team with technical risk management, strategy, and decision-making.
• Help shape epics and technical deliverables in alignment with roadmap goals.
• Own technical dependencies and contribute to planning cycles including Quarterly Alignment, Monthly Value Stream Planning, and Sprint Planning.

Implementation & Delivery

• Contribute to the detailed design, engineering quality, and technical oversight of solutions delivered within the Value Stream.
• Ensure all technical solutions follow architecture governance and align with Admiral’s engineering strategy.
• Drive improvements to CI/CD pipelines, automation, testing practices, and secure delivery.
• Lead on resolving technical constraints, blockers, and integration challenges.
• Identify and address technical debt, ensuring sustainability and maintainability.
• Oversee vulnerability management by promoting secure development practices and robust solution design.
• Identify and implement continuous improvements to delivery and engineering processes.

Collaboration & Communication

• Facilitate clear communication across squads and roles to ensure alignment and knowledge transfer.
• Promote engineering values such as transparency, quality, openness, and productivity.
• Collaborate with key technical stakeholders including Architecture, Information Security, Data Governance, and Heads of Capabilities.
• Contribute to communities of practice, Chapter and Guild forums, and internal initiatives.

Experience Required

Technical Expertise

• Proven experience in a Senior or Staff Engineer role, ideally within data teams
• Strong background in CI/CD practices, automated testing, and optimised deployment strategies.
• In-depth knowledge of testing frameworks and strategies across unit, integration, E2E, and non-functional domains.
• Experience with containerisation and infrastructure tools such as Docker, Kubernetes and Terraform.
• Programming Languages: Expert level in languages like Python or Java, often using them to build complex data processing workflows and applications.
• Cloud Platforms: Be proficient in one or more major cloud platforms preferably Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or Microsoft Azure.
• Data Warehousing and Databases: A deep understanding of both relational databases (SQL) and NoSQL databases. Expert in data modelling, schema design, and optimizing database performance. Know how to design and manage data warehouses for efficient analytics.
• ETL/ELT and Data Orchestration: Design, build, and maintain complex Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) or Extract, Load, Transform (ELT) pipelines. Proficient with orchestration tools like Apache Airflow to automate and monitor these workflows.
• Real-time Data Processing: Skilled in streaming data technologies to handle real-time data ingestion and processing like DataStream or Cloud Pub/Sub.
• Comprehensive knowledge and experience with design, development and testing of data pipelines and Kimball data warehouse models. 
• Knowledge and experience in Scrum development practices, using associated tools for testing and continuous integration & deployment. 
• Knowledge and experience of DBT and reporting tools such as Looker or Strategy
• Experience and knowledge of implementing and maintaining data architectures like Medallion or Lakehouse.
• Desirable: Awareness or experience with Guidewire Software products (e.g. PolicyCenter, BillingCenter).

Admiral: Where You Can

We take pride in being a diverse and inclusive business. It's a place where you can Be You, and show up as you are. We’re committed to fostering a people-first culture where everyone is accepted, supported, and empowered to be brilliant. You can, Grow And Progress at a pace and direction that suits you, Make A Difference for our customers and each other, and Share in Our Future with all colleagues eligible for up to £3,600 of free shares each year after one year of service.

Everyone receives 33 days holiday (including bank holidays) when they join us, increasing the longer you stay with us, up to a maximum of 38 days (including bank holidays). You also have the option to buy or sell up to an additional five days of annual leave.

We’re proud of our people-first culture. In fact, we've been recognised as a Great Place to Work for Women, a Great Place to Work for Wellbeing, and an overall Great Place to Work for over 25 years! We’re fully committed to making sure your progression is not slowed or halted by barriers related to race, gender, age, sexuality or any of the protected characteristics.

Our fantastic benefits make sure our colleagues have a great work-life balance; You can view some of our other key benefits here.

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