Location flexibility: 3 office days / week – 3 days in the office, 2 days from home
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River Water Quality Programme Warrington (Hybrid – 3 days onsite per week)
At United Utilities, we’re committed to protecting the environment that millions of people depend on every day. As part of our Digital Services team, you’ll play a pivotal role in one of our most important and high-impact initiatives: near real time monitoring of river water quality.
We’re looking for a Lead Data Engineer to take technical ownership of modern, scalable data platforms that turn complex environmental and telemetry data into trusted insights for regulators, scientists, and operational teams.
What you’ll be doing
As the Lead Data Engineer on our River Water Quality Programme, you’ll design, build, and optimise Databricks-based data pipelines that enable timely, reliable and well-governed data across the organisation.
You’ll:
Design and develop scalable batch and streaming data pipelines using Databricks, Spark and Delta Lake
Implement medallion architecture (bronze/silver/gold) to ensure data quality, lineage and efficient consumption
Optimise Spark jobs and workflows to meet near real-time monitoring SLAs
Build and maintain streaming pipelines using Structured Streaming and Delta Live Tables
, including schema enforcement, validation rules and ACID compliance
Orchestrate and automate pipelines using Databricks Jobs, APIs or cloud-native schedulers
Collaborate with data scientists, analysts and environmental specialists to deliver high-quality, well-documented datasets
Monitor, troubleshoot and continuously improve production pipelines for reliability, performance and cost efficiency
Champion best practices across CI/CD, testing, version control and documentation
Act as a technical leader and mentor, raising standards across the data engineering community
What you’ll bring
Essential
Deep expertise in Databricks (Spark / PySpark, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Workflows)
Strong experience building ETL/ELT pipelines, both batch and streaming
Advanced Python and SQL skills
Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (Azure, AWS or GCP)
Solid understanding of data modelling and modern architectures
Strong knowledge of data governance, security and compliance
Desirable
Experience with orchestration tools such as Airflow
Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, Git workflows and automated testing
Exposure to real-time, IoT or environmental telemetry data
Experience & Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering or a related discipline
5+ years’ experience in data engineering roles, including 3+ years with Databricks
Proven ability to lead technically and mentor engineers
What you’ll get
We believe in rewarding our people properly:
Up to 10.5% annual bonus
Outstanding pension – up to 21% combined contribution
Private healthcare
Share buy scheme
Wellbeing benefits and support programmes
Other
Why United Utilities?
You’ll be working on data that truly matters — protecting rivers, supporting environmental compliance, and helping shape the future of sustainable water management across the North West.
If you’re passionate about modern data engineering, enjoy technical leadership, and want your work to have real-world environmental impact, we’d love to hear from you.
Working at United Utilities
3 office days / week – 3 days in the office, 2 days from home
A little flex time
Company employees:
7,500
Gender diversity (m:f):
65:35
Hiring in countries
United Kingdom
Office Locations
Company benefits
26 days annual leave + bank holidays
Annual bonus – Bonus levels vary depending on your role grade
Buy or sell annual leave – Buy or sell up to 5 days per year
Death in service – covered for 4 times pensionable earnings
Cinema discounts
Employee recognition scheme – Colleague led recognition scheme with monthly winners
Cycle to work scheme
Dental coverage
Collaboration spaces
Electric Car Salary Sacrifice
Employee assistance programme
Enhanced maternity leave – Up to 26 weeks leave at full pay
Enhanced pension match/contribution – Up to 21% combined contributions
Enhanced sick days
Ergonomic workstations
Faith rooms
Family health insurance
Further education support – Ongoing learning opportunities through apprenticeships and vocational training
Gym membership – On-site gym at our head office & discounts on local gyms for those not based there
Health cash plan
Health insurance
In house training
Mental health days – 1 wellbeing day per year (in addition to annual leave)
Mental health first aiders
Compassionate leave
Enhanced paternity leave – Up to 4 weeks leave at full pay
Mental health platform access – Offering mental health consultations, health checks, digital fitness resources, and wellbeing support.
On-site gym
Open to compressed hours
Open to part time work for some roles
Adoption leave
Private GP service – via our virtual GP - available to you and your loved ones
Professional subscriptions
Referral bonus – of £500
Neonatal leave
Reservist leave – Reservists/Army Reserve with 6 months service are entitled to 10 days paid leave per year to attend the annual training camp.
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