Principal Data Engineer

We’re Kingfisher, a team made up of over 74,000 passionate people who bring Kingfisher - and all our other brands: Castorama, B&Q, Screwfix, Brico Dépôt and Koçtaş - to life. That’s right, we’re big, but we have ambitions to become even bigger and even better. We want to become the leading home improvement company and grow the largest community of home improvers in the world. And that’s where you come in.

At Kingfisher, our customers come from all walks of life, and so do we. We want to ensure that all colleagues, future colleagues, and applicants to Kingfisher are treated equally regardless of age, gender, marital or civil partnership status, colour, ethnic or national origin, culture, religious belief, philosophical belief, political opinion, disability, gender identity, gender expression or sexual orientation.

We are open to flexible and agile working. Therefore, we offer colleagues a blend of working from home and our office, located in Kraków. Talk to us about how we can best support you!

At Kingfisher, we value the perspectives that any new team members bring, and we want to hear from you. We encourage you to apply for one of our roles, even if you do not feel you meet 100% of the requirements.

In return, we offer an inclusive environment, where what you can achieve is limited only by your imagination! We encourage new ideas, actively support experimentation, and strive to build an environment where everyone can be their best self.

We offer a competitive benefit package and plenty of opportunities to stretch and grow your career:

• 29,000 - 39,000 PLN gross per month on an employment contract
• Private medical healthcare at LUXMED (including dentalcare) for you and your family
• Medicover sports card (Fit&More package)
• Life insurance financed by the employer
• 30-minute lunch break included in the 8-hour working day
• Work in a highly professional and stimulating atmosphere
• Training & Buddy programme that will allow you to quickly adapt to your new role
• Wellbeing programme for employees
• Co-financing of monthly tickets for the public transport in Krakow
• Comfortable working environment in the office and the possibility of home office
• Language courses, accounting courses, access to LinkedIn Learning and the possibility of co-financing studies and certification
• Employee referral programme

What's the job

About the role

As a Principal Data Engineer, you will be a senior individual contributor and technical leader, shaping the design, direction, and evolution of Kingfisher's data platforms and products.

Operating at a leading capability level, you will be recognised as a trusted technical expert and advisor across Group Technology, influencing engineering strategy, technical standards, and ways of working across multiple squads and domains.

You will lead the delivery of enterprise-scale data solutions, enable high-performing engineering teams, and drive the evolution of our data platforms to ensure they deliver measurable business value. Through your technical leadership, you will help establish engineering best practices, support innovation, and contribute to the long-term success of our data engineering capability.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the data platform and data engineering strategy, aligned with Group Technology objectives.
• Lead architecture decisions and establish engineering standards, best practices, and scalable design patterns across data pipelines, storage, and processing.
• Partner with Architecture and Product teams to shape long-term platform roadmaps and capabilities.
• Design and deliver robust, production-ready data platforms and pipelines that are scalable, resilient, high-performing, and cost-efficient.
• Champion modern data engineering practices, including CI/CD, automated testing, observability, DevOps, and platform automation.
• Drive data quality, governance, and security standards while promoting reusable data products and shared platform capabilities.
• Provide technical leadership across multiple squads, influencing engineering decisions and collaborating with senior stakeholders across Engineering, Product, Architecture, and Technology.
• Lead complex, business-critical initiatives spanning multiple teams, systems, and geographies.
• Mentor and coach engineers across the Data Engineering Chapter, fostering knowledge sharing, continuous learning, and engineering excellence.
• Support hiring, onboarding, and capability development while helping build a strong engineering community.
• Stay ahead of emerging technologies, evaluating and introducing new tools and approaches that deliver measurable value.
• Drive continuous improvement across the data engineering landscape, ensuring technical solutions support customer and commercial outcomes while balancing quality, speed, cost, and risk.

What you'll bring

• Proven ability to influence executive-level stakeholders and collaborate effectively across multiple domains.
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making skills, with experience addressing complex, ambiguous, and cross-system challenges.
• Ability to lead through uncertainty, transformation, and changing priorities.
• A track record of setting engineering standards, driving continuous improvement, and raising capability across teams.
• Experience coaching engineers and contributing to the development of high-performing teams and engineering communities.
• Strong expertise in distributed data processing systems and architectures.
• Deep knowledge of data modelling, storage, access, and processing patterns.
• Proven experience delivering large-scale data platforms and production-grade data pipelines.
• Strong programming skills in Python and SQL.
• Hands-on experience with Spark, PySpark, or Scala.
• Experience using DBT for data modelling and transformation.
• Strong knowledge of cloud platforms, including GCP, Azure, and AWS.
• Experience with data platforms and services such as Databricks, BigQuery, and Azure Data Factory.
• Strong understanding of DevOps and DataOps practices, including CI/CD, Git, Terraform, Docker, and Kubernetes.
• Experience with data quality tools and testing frameworks, including Great Expectations.
• Deep understanding of batch, streaming, and event-driven data architecture patterns.
• Strong knowledge of cloud-native and distributed systems design.
• Experience designing resilient, scalable, and observable systems.
• Proven ability to optimise data platforms for performance and cost efficiency.
• Ability to act as a trusted technical authority, influence strategic direction and investment decisions, and deliver measurable business value through data platforms.
• Excellent command of English (written and spoken).