Head of Data

Harnham - Data and Analytics Recruitment
London, United Kingdom
2 days ago
£80,000 – £140,000 pa

Salary

£80,000 – £140,000 pa

Job Type
Permanent
Seniority
Director
Education
Degree
Posted
29 May 2026 (2 days ago)

Benefits

Competitive benefits package Hybrid working model Clear scope for progression

HEAD OF DATA
£140,000
LONDON

This is a senior opportunity to take ownership of data strategy within a fast-growing, product-led technology business. You'll have the chance to bring structure to a fragmented data landscape, make visible impact quickly, and build out a data function with real autonomy.

THE COMPANY

Our client is a global technology business operating in the employee experience and benefits space. Following a recent merger, the organisation is entering a new phase of growth and scale. This role has been created to help unify data across the business and enable more consistent, strategic use of data at all levels.

THE ROLE

* Own and define the company-wide data strategy, moving from a reactive to a scalable and well-governed data platform
* Take ownership of the data environment, improving data quality, consistency and architecture across multiple sources
* Review and evolve the existing tech stack (AWS, SQL, Power BI), identifying areas for improvement
* Design and maintain data pipelines, including ingestion and transformation, to support analytics and reporting
* Manage and mentor two data engineers initially, with scope to grow the team
* Act as a thought leader, working closely with BI, product and non-technical stakeholders
* Help shape the business's approach to AI, focusing on practical internal use cases to improve data accessibility

YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

* Strong background in data engineering and data platform ownership
* Experience working in complex, multi-source data environments
* Hands-on experience with cloud-based data stacks (AWS, SQL, BI tools)
* Confident stakeholder management across technical and non-technical teams
* Previous management or mentoring experience preferred
* Exposure to semantic layers or AI-led data accessibility tools is advantageous

SALARY AND BENEFITS

* Up to £140,000 base salary

* Competitive benefits package
* Hybrid working model (3 days in office)
* Clear scope for progression as the function grows

HOW TO APPLY


Please register your interest by sending your CV toHarry Lack through the 'Apply' link.

Related Jobs

View all jobs

Senior Data Engineer

Harnham - Data and Analytics Recruitment London, United Kingdom
£60,000 – £75,000 pa Remote

Senior Data Architect

DVSA.GOV Birmingham, West Midlands (county), United Kingdom
£57,515 – £82,430 pa On-site Clearance Required

Senior Data Architect

DVSA.GOV Oldham, Manchester, United Kingdom
£57,515 – £82,430 pa On-site Clearance Required

Senior Data Architect

DVSA.GOV Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom
£57,515 – £82,430 pa On-site Clearance Required

Data Management Officer-Banking

People First (Recruitment) Ltd London, United Kingdom
On-site

Senior Data Strategy Consultant, Marketing Solutions

TransUnion London, United Kingdom

Industry Insights

Discover insightful articles, industry insights, expert tips, and curated resources.

Where to Advertise Data Engineering Jobs in the UK (2026 Guide)

Where to advertise data engineering jobs UK in 2026: the specialist boards and channels that reach Spark, dbt, Snowflake and platform engineering talent. Data engineers occupy a distinct discipline that sits between software engineering, data science and cloud infrastructure — and the strongest candidates identify firmly with the data engineering community rather than with adjacent roles. General job boards consistently conflate data engineering with data analysis, data science and BI development, producing high application volumes but low candidate quality for specialist pipeline and platform roles. This guide, published by DataEngineeringJobs.co.uk, covers where to advertise data engineering roles in the UK in 2026, how the main platforms compare, what employers should expect to pay, and what the data says about hiring across different role types.

Data Engineering Jobs UK 2026: What to Expect Over the Next 3 Years

Data Engineering Jobs UK 2026: roles, salaries and the trends shaping UK data engineering hiring over the next three years — Spark, dbt, lakehouse and AI. Data engineering has become one of the most strategically important disciplines in the entire technology sector — and one of the most reliably in-demand. Every organisation that wants to use data to make decisions, train AI models, personalise products, manage risk, or understand its customers depends on data engineers to build the infrastructure that makes any of that possible. Without well-designed, reliable data pipelines, the most sophisticated machine learning model is worthless and the most ambitious analytics strategy is undeliverable. That foundational importance has made data engineering hiring remarkably resilient through the technology market corrections of the past few years. Where headcount reductions fell heavily on some engineering disciplines, demand for data engineers held firm — because the work of building and maintaining data infrastructure cannot be deferred in the way that some product development can. The data keeps coming. The pipelines need to work. But the data engineering jobs market of 2026 is not simply a stable version of what it was three years ago. The discipline has undergone a series of architectural shifts — from batch to streaming, from on-premise data warehouses to cloud-native lakehouses, from hand-rolled pipelines to declarative transformation frameworks, and most recently toward AI-augmented data engineering workflows that are beginning to reshape what the role looks like in practice. The employers hiring data engineers today are asking for a meaningfully different skill set than those hiring three years ago. The candidates who will thrive over the next three years are those who understand where the discipline is heading — which architectural patterns are becoming standard, which technologies are defining the modern data stack, and how the definition of a data engineering career is evolving toward a richer intersection of infrastructure, analytics, and AI enablement. This article breaks down what the UK data engineering jobs market is likely to look like through to 2028 — covering the titles emerging right now, the technologies driving employer demand, the skills that will matter most, and how to position your career ahead of the curve.