Principal Engineer

Sky
Tw75Qd, TW7 5QD, United Kingdom
Yesterday
Job Type
Permanent
Work Pattern
Full-time
Work Location
On-site
Seniority
Lead
Education
Degree
Posted
1 Jun 2026 (Yesterday)

Benefits

25 days holiday Pension Private healthcare
We believe in better. And we make it happen.

Better content. Better products. And better careers.

Working in Tech, Product or Data at Sky is about building the next and the new. From broadband to broadcast, streaming to mobile, SkyQ to Sky Glass, we never stand still. We optimise and innovate.

We turn big ideas into the products, content and services millions of people love.

And we do it all right here at Sky.

What you'll do:
  • Technical Mentorship:Act as the technical lead engineers working cross-functionally in an agile environment; act as a top-notch coder and expert in the domain, capable of deep diving into details of components and features, uplifting capability and shaping engineering maturity across the Domain.
  • Architecture Partnership:Define and guide the technical architecture for complex, high impact data products and platforms. Manage Solution Architects and act as the natural bridge between Data Engineering and Data Architecture as well as colleagues in wider Technology.
  • Standards Setting:Establish engineering patterns, coding standards, and best practices adopted across multiple squads.
  • Design & Innovation:Translate sophisticated business and technical requirements into scalable, cloud native data solutions. Able to create and build frameworks to support CI/CD pipelines and future capability; drive adoption of new tools, technologies, and engineering approaches that support a cloud-agnostic, AI-ready future
  • Assurance & Excellence:Embed rigorous validation, profiling, reconciliation, and automated testing into all engineering work; lead monitoring, observability, and performance optimisation to ensure resilient, reliable data products.
  • Strategic Influence:Partner with architects, product leaders, and senior stakeholders to shape roadmaps and platform direction. Work collaboratively with your Principal Engineer peers to ensure consistent and joined-up approaches to our biggest priorities and challenges. Communicating in both deeply technical and plain and simple terms.
What you'll bring:
  • Technical Mastery:Deep expertise in cloud data engineering, distributed processing, and enterprise-scale data architecture. Excellent GCP/Python and/or Node JS 8+ knowledge, and CI/CD experience (ideally with Jenkins).
  • Advanced SQL:Master-level proficiency in SQL (ideally BigQuery ), with strong optimisation and performance-tuning skills. Experience following coding standards and performing peer code reviews.
  • Data Modelling & Insight:Strong capability in designing intuitive, scalable data models and semantic layers aligned to business meaning; skilled in advanced data profiling, anomaly detection, and statistical reasoning to ensure data integrity.
  • Collaboration:Able to influence senior stakeholders, simplify complex concepts, and build strong cross-functional relationships.
  • Technical Leadership:Expert in data quality frameworks, governance standards, and secure handling of sensitive data; connects engineering choices to long-term platform strategy, organisational goals, and future scalability.
  • Understanding:Uses deep business context within the specific Domain to shape proactive, value-driven engineering decisions; also equipped with first-class communication skills, able to grasp very complex data principles and processes, and decipher them in order to walk non-experts through them and gain support.
Team overview:

Our vision is to enable Sky's growth ambitions though Data and AI: deepening customer relationships, optimising commercial performance, and enhancing operational efficiency.

OurPrincipal Engineerswork within Domains and manage our Solution Architects. With top-notch skills, they act as our Technical Leads, setting and improving standards across the team and helping to raise the bar on what's possible. As a senior role, they're also our bridge into wider teams such as Architecture and Technology, ensuring we work together in harmony in pursuit of our data strategy.

OurResidential ProductsDomain is part of the Customer Directorate within Sky Data. It's where we build and maintain data products and data assets for Sky's Connectivity business - including Sky Broadband and Sky Mobile - as well as Sky TV and Sky Protect. We work within the Value Streams, as part of cross-functional teams driving exciting roadmaps; we also support broader work where we help to transform how things get done. That means we're at the heart of the action, supporting and working on the products that keep our customers connected and protected, and which directly drive their Sky experience. Whether we're helping to create magic on screen via the products people watch or using data and AI to improve how our business is set up behind the scenes, one thing's for sure - this is a winning team that collaborates across Sky to make a genuine difference.

The rewards

There's one thing people can't stop talking about when it comes to#LifeAtSky : the perks . Here's a taster:
  • Sky Q, for the TV you love all in one place
  • The magic of Sky Glass at an exclusive rate
  • A generous pension package
  • Private healthcare
  • Discounted mobile and broadband
  • A wide range of Sky VIP rewards and experiences
Inclusion & how you'll work:

Recognised by The Times and Stonewall, we take pride in our approach to diversity and inclusion. Investing in society, fighting

Related Jobs

View all jobs

Principal Engineer

Hyperloop Recruitment Liverpool, United Kingdom
Hybrid

Principal Engineer (Java) - up to+ Bonus

Involved Solutions London, United Kingdom
£75,000 – £100,000 pa Hybrid

Principal Engineer (Java) - up to+ Bonus

Involved Solutions Coventry, United Kingdom
£75,000 – £100,000 pa Hybrid

Principal Software Engineer

Franklin Bates Bs11Ad, BS1 1AD, United Kingdom
Remote

Principal Data Engineer

Sky Polbeth, West Lothian, EH55 8SP, United Kingdom
On-site

Principal Data Engineer

Sky Syon, London, United Kingdom
On-site

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.