Senior Manager - Data & AI Engineering
Waterloo - Hybrid Working
Full time
permanent
Grade 5
At Currys we’re united by one passion: to help everyone enjoy amazing technology. As the UK’s best-known retailer of tech, we’re proud of the service our customers receive – and it’s all down to our team of 25,000 caring and committed colleagues. Working as one team, we learn and grow together, celebrating the big and small moments that make every day amazing.
The Senior Manager – Data and AI Engineering role is a senior hands on technical role. It will be accountable for leading our Data and AI Engineering and Machine Learning (ML) Ops teams in the UK and India for deliverables across UK & Ireland.
Role overview:
As part of this role, you'll be responsible for:
• Team Leadership – Lead, support, and grow a mixed team of engineers (UK and offshore), including mentoring early-career talent.
• Technical Ownership – Own the core Azure Databricks platform and engineering flow—from ingestion and transformation to conformed models and data products.
• Data Product Development – Use dbt to create conformed layers that serve as the foundation for analytics, AI, and monetisation use cases.
• Quality & Metadata – Champion data quality, testing, and lineage. Improve metadata visibility so others can trust, describe, and use our data confidently.
• Hub-and-Spoke Enablement – Drive a delivery model that empowers spokes (e.g. Retail Media, AI teams) to move quickly while maintaining consistency and control.
• Architecture & Governance – Contribute to platform architecture decisions. Ensure responsible, secure, and scalable data access and change management.
• Stakeholder Engagement – Work cross-functionally with Product, Analytics, and AI leaders to deliver what matters—and communicate technical decisions clearly.
• Vision & Delivery – Help shape the future of data engineering at Currys. Define where we’re heading, and build the path to get us there.
This role will define, document and enforce data and ML engineering standards. It will have accountability for the performant and efficient build and operation of data components on our Azure Databricks Cloud platform. The role will be responsible for ensuring that we are utilizing the optimal software components on the platform and will own our data ingestion patterns and ML Ops practice.
You will need:
• You’ve will have worked in fast-moving, agile environments. You’ve probably shipped things that didn’t work, and learned fast. Now, you bring that pragmatism, resilience, and technical strength into your leadership style.
• Proven experience leading data engineering teams, including offshore/hybrid delivery
• Strong technical knowledge of Databricks, Spark, Delta Lake and dbt
• Experience designing and delivering conformed data models and reusable data products
• Solid grasp of data quality, testing, metadata, and governance principles
• Comfortable being a technical hands-on leader when needed
• Able to communicate clearly and credibly with technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Confident operating in a delivery-focused, agile environment with changing priorities
• Desirable:
• Experience with Azure Data Factory, Unity Catalog, or similar orchestration/governance tooling
• Exposure to supporting AI, Retail Media, or advanced analytics use cases
• A personal passion for making data usable, useful, and valuable—across the business
We know our people are the secret to our success. That's why we're always looking for ways to reward great work. You'll find a host of benefits designed to work for you, including:
- Company bonus
- Private Medical
- Pension
Why join us:
Join our team and we'll be with you every step of the way, helping you develop the career you want with new opportunities, on-going training and skills for life.
Not only can you shape your own future, but you can help take charge of ours too. As the biggest recycler and repairer of tech in the UK, we’re in a position to make a real impact on people and the planet.
Every voice has a space at our table and we're committed to making inclusion and diversity part of everything we do, including how we strengthen our workforce. We want to make sure you have a fair opportunity to show us your talents during our application process, so if you need any additional assistance with your application please email careers@currys.co.uk and we'll do our best to help.