Lead Data Engineer

Aker Systems

Aker Systems was founded in 2017 by a team of experienced technology professionals who recognised an opportunity to provide highly secure enterprise data platforms to large organisations.  We build and operate ground-breaking, ultra-secure, high performance, cloud-based data infrastructure for the enterprise. Our proprietary technology solutions drive performance and reduce costs while helping our clients to improve the management and sharing of data across their organisations. In 2024, Aker Systems won the Breakthrough Culture Awards highlighting growth companies putting culture first. In 2020 Aker Systems was recognised as a ‘One to Watch’ on the Sunday Times Tech Track.  The Company was also recognised at the Thames Valley Tech Awards 2020; winning the Thames Valley Tech Company of the year, the Emerging Tech Company and High Growth Tech Business categories.  We encourage people of all different backgrounds and identities to apply.  We are committed to maintaining an inclusive, and supportive place for you to do your very best work. PRINCIPAL ENGINEER – DATA PLATFORM Location: Remote (UK-based; Security Clearance Required) A UK Government Security Check (SC) clearance is required for this role. If you don’t currently hold SC clearance, we can support you in applying, provided you have lived and worked in the UK for a minimum of 5 years. As a Principal Data Platform Engineer, you will define and drive the technical vision, architecture, and evolution of data platforms for a government client. You will operate at a systems and organisational level, shaping how data is ingested, processed, governed, and consumed across multiple teams and services. This role goes beyond hands-on engineering — it requires deep technical authority, cross-team influence, and strategic decision-making to ensure platforms are secure, scalable, resilient, and aligned to long-term business outcomes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- KEY RESPONSIBILITIES * Define and own the technical strategy for data platform architecture, balancing short-term delivery with long-term scalability and maintainability. * Lead the design of complex, distributed data systems, including batch and real-time processing at scale. * Establish platform-wide standards, patterns, and best practices for data engineering, reliability, and security. * Act as a technical authority and mentor, guiding senior and lead engineers across teams. * Drive architecture decisions across multiple squads, ensuring alignment with enterprise and government standards. * Partner with architects, product leaders, and stakeholders to translate ambiguous requirements into scalable technical solutions. * Ensure high availability, fault tolerance, and low-latency performance across critical data services. * Champion engineering excellence, including TDD, BDD, observability, and continuous delivery practices. * Oversee data modelling standards and governance, ensuring consistency, lineage, and integrity across systems. * Lead cross-team incident analysis and root cause resolution, driving systemic improvements. * Evaluate and introduce new technologies, tools, and frameworks to evolve platform capabilities. * Provide technical leadership in client engagements, influencing decisions and managing senior stakeholder expectations. * Ensure operational excellence, including resilience planning, cost optimisation, and platform sustainability. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- REQUIRED EXPERIENCE & COMPETENCIES NON-TECHNICAL COMPETENCIES * Operating effectively in high ambiguity and incomplete problem spaces * Influencing senior stakeholders and cross-functional teams * Navigating complex client environments and competing priorities * Leading through technical authority rather than hierarchy * Driving alignment across multiple teams and domains * Continuously evaluating and adopting emerging technologies strategically ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TECHNICAL COMPETENCIES * Extensive experience designing and building large-scale, distributed data platforms * Deep expertise in Java-based systems and modern backend architectures * Strong experience with streaming and event-driven architectures (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis) * Experience with large-scale data processing frameworks (e.g., Spark, Flink, Kafka Streams) * Expertise in cloud-native architectures, ideally on AWS (including Lambda, S3, managed services) * Strong understanding of data pipeline design, orchestration, and optimisation * Experience with data modelling at scale, including schema design and evolution * Expertise in relational and NoSQL database design and performance tuning * Proven track record of implementing CI/CD, observability, and platform reliability practices * Strong experience with DevOps and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) * Ability to define and enforce engineering standards across teams ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DESIRABLE SKILLS * Advanced expertise in data modelling strategies and trade-offs across systems * Experience with search and indexing platforms (Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Solr) * Strong knowledge of CI/CD ecosystems (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI, Drone) * Experience with infrastructure automation tools (Terraform, Ansible, Packer) * Exposure to data governance, security, and compliance frameworks in regulated environments ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- QUALIFICATIONS * Degree in Computer Science or a related field (or equivalent experience) * Typically 10+ years of experience in software/data engineering, with significant time spent in architecture or principal-level roles Aker Systems Attributes At Aker we work as a team; we are collaborative, hardworking, open, and delivery obsessed. There is no blame culture here: try things, and take responsibility for the outcomes. You are always part of the wider Aker. We help our colleagues and take pride in successfully achieving difficult tasks. We run towards problems and help to solve them. Communicate always, do so accurately and in a timely fashion. In return, we offer a competitive salary, 25 days holiday plus bank holidays, company paid medical insurance and life assurance, pension scheme, annual training allowance, wellbeing allowance, virtual GP, Employee Assistance plan and more. Equal Opportunities Aker Systems fosters a diverse environment that encourages openness in its communications and is committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, age, marital status, national origin, citizenship status, disability, veteran status or other personal characteristics. We embrace differences of opinion and diversity because they help challenge us and find new groundbreaking technical solutions.

Aker Systems

Aker Systems was founded in 2017 by a team of experienced technology professionals who recognised an opportunity to provide highly secure enterprise data platforms to large organisations.  We build and operate ground-breaking, ultra-secure, high performance, cloud-based data infrastructure for the enterprise. Our proprietary technology solutions drive performance and reduce costs while helping our clients to improve the management and sharing of data across their organisations. In 2024, Aker Systems won the Breakthrough Culture Awards highlighting growth companies putting culture first. In 2020 Aker Systems was recognised as a ‘One to Watch’ on the Sunday Times Tech Track.  The Company was also recognised at the Thames Valley Tech Awards 2020; winning the Thames Valley Tech Company of the year, the Emerging Tech Company and High Growth Tech Business categories.  We encourage people of all different backgrounds and identities to apply.  We are committed to maintaining an inclusive, and supportive place for you to do your very best work. About the Role We are seeking a Lead Performance Automation Engineer to define and drive performance engineering strategy, tooling, and practices across large-scale, distributed, cloud-native platforms. This is a technical leadership role responsible for ensuring systems are: * Scalable * Reliable * Resilient under load * Optimised for performance and cost efficiency You will lead performance testing and engineering initiatives across multiple teams, embedding non-functional quality into every stage of the software lifecycle. Key Responsibilities 1. Performance Engineering Strategy & Leadership * Define and own the organisation-wide performance testing and engineering strategy. * Establish standards for: * Performance testing approaches * Workload modelling * Capacity planning * Introduce and scale performance engineering practices across multiple delivery teams. * Provide technical leadership and mentoring to QA and engineering teams on performance best practices. * Align performance goals with business SLAs, SLOs, and user experience expectations. 2. Performance Test Architecture & Automation * Design and implement scalable performance test frameworks and automation pipelines. * Lead adoption of tools such as: * Gatling, JMeter, k6, Locust or similar * Build reusable solutions for: * Load testing * Stress testing * Spike testing * Soak testing * Integrate performance testing into CI/CD pipelines for continuous validation. * Ensure performance tests are repeatable, reliable, and production-representative. 3. Workload Modelling & Test Design * Define realistic user workload models based on production data and usage patterns. * Design performance test scenarios reflecting: * Peak load * Concurrent users * Throughput and latency requirements * Apply risk-based prioritisation for performance testing. * Ensure coverage across: * APIs * Microservices * Data pipelines * Event-driven systems 4. Backend, API & Distributed System Performance * Lead performance validation for: * Microservices architectures * Event-driven systems (Kafka) * High-throughput APIs * Analyse latency, throughput, error rates, and bottlenecks across distributed systems. * Validate system behaviour under failure conditions and degraded environments. * Ensure horizontal scalability and resilience strategies are tested. 5. Cloud, Infrastructure & Scalability Testing * Validate performance across: * AWS cloud environments * Containerised platforms (Docker, Kubernetes) * Conduct capacity planning and infrastructure benchmarking. * Ensure systems scale efficiently using: * Auto-scaling * Load balancing * Distributed architectures * Evaluate performance of Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) deployments. 6. Observability, Analysis & Bottleneck Resolution * Use observability tools to analyse system performance, including: * Metrics (Prometheus, Datadog) * Logs (ELK) * Traces (distributed tracing tools) * Identify and diagnose: * CPU, memory, I/O bottlenecks * Network latency issues * Database performance constraints * Collaborate with engineering teams to optimise system performance and architecture. 7. Non-Functional Quality Governance * Define and enforce performance SLAs, SLOs, and acceptance criteria. * Establish quality gates for performance within CI/CD pipelines. * Ensure performance requirements are validated before production release. * Drive adoption of performance testing standards across teams. * Support audit, compliance, and regulatory expectations in performance-critical systems. 8. Production Performance & Continuous Improvement * Analyse real production performance data to refine testing strategies. * Lead performance-related incident investigations and RCA activities. * Establish feedback loops between production observability and test environments. * Drive improvements in: * System responsiveness * Stability under load * Operational resilience 9. Metrics, Reporting & Optimisation * Define and track performance KPIs, including: * Response times * Throughput * Error rates * Resource utilisation * Build performance dashboards and reporting frameworks. * Drive continuous optimisation initiatives based on performance data. * Align performance metrics with business outcomes and user experience. Technology Environment Performance Testing Tools * Gatling, k6, JMeter, Locust (or similar) Languages * Java, Kotlin, Python, or JavaScript Architecture * Microservices, Event-driven systems, Kafka Cloud & Infrastructure * AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform CI/CD * GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins Observability * Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, ELK, Distributed Tracing What We’re Looking For Essential * Proven experience as a Performance Test Lead / Performance Engineer / SDET * Strong experience defining performance testing strategies and frameworks * Hands-on expertise with modern performance testing tools * Deep understanding of: * Scalability and distributed system performance * Cloud-native architectures * Experience integrating performance testing into CI/CD pipelines * Strong skills in: * Performance analysis and bottleneck identification * Root cause analysis and system optimisation * Experience defining and tracking performance SLAs/SLOs and KPIs * Ability to lead and influence cross-team quality improvements Desirable * Experience in high-scale or regulated environments * Exposure to: * Chaos engineering * Resilience and fault injection testing * Experience with capacity planning and cost optimisation * Knowledge of security-performance interactions (e.g., encryption overhead) Personal Attributes * Strong systems thinking and analytical mindset * Ability to translate performance data into practical engineering improvements * Influential leader across engineering and product teams * Proactive and outcome-driven * Strong communication and stakeholder management skills Aker Systems Attributes At Aker we work as a team; we are collaborative, hardworking, open, and delivery obsessed. There is no blame culture here: try things, and take responsibility for the outcomes. You are always part of the wider Aker. We help our colleagues and take pride in successfully achieving difficult tasks. We run towards problems and help to solve them. Communicate always, do so accurately and in a timely fashion. In return, we offer a competitive salary, 25 days holiday plus bank holidays, company paid medical insurance and life assurance, pension scheme, annual training allowance, wellbeing allowance, virtual GP, Employee Assistance plan and more. Equal Opportunities Aker Systems fosters a diverse environment that encourages openness in its communications and is committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, age, marital status, national origin, citizenship status, disability, veteran status or other personal characteristics. We embrace differences of opinion and diversity because they help challenge us and find new groundbreaking technical solutions.

Aker Systems

Aker Systems was founded in 2017 by a team of experienced technology professionals who recognised an opportunity to provide highly secure enterprise data platforms to large organisations.  We build and operate ground-breaking, ultra-secure, high performance, cloud-based data infrastructure for the enterprise. Our proprietary technology solutions drive performance and reduce costs while helping our clients to improve the management and sharing of data across their organisations. In 2024, Aker Systems won the Breakthrough Culture Awards highlighting growth companies putting culture first. In 2020 Aker Systems was recognised as a ‘One to Watch’ on the Sunday Times Tech Track.  The Company was also recognised at the Thames Valley Tech Awards 2020; winning the Thames Valley Tech Company of the year, the Emerging Tech Company and High Growth Tech Business categories.  We encourage people of all different backgrounds and identities to apply.  We are committed to maintaining an inclusive, and supportive place for you to do your very best work. DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES A UK Government Security Check (SC) clearance is required for this role. If you don’t hold SC clearance, we will support you to apply assuming you have lived and worked in the UK for a minimum of 5 years. As a Software Engineer, you will help lead the development of backend services for a government client leveraging the latest commercial and open-source technologies. This involves designing, developing, documenting and deploying backend services with a focus on high availability, low latency and scalability.  * Design, develop, document and deploy new or enhanced features to our backend services that meet functional / non-functional business requirements  * Actively participate in the team’s elaboration and estimation of user stories  * Build frequent, small releases to maintain the team’s momentum  * Collaborate closely with other engineers in our cross-functional feature teams; ensuring that others can cover for you, and that you can cover for them  * Build, optimise and operate our Continuous Deployment pipelines  * Maintain operational responsibility for the services that your team owns  CORE COMPETENCIES The successful candidate will have a Bachelor's degree or greater in Computer Science or a related field. An equivalent of at least 5 years of working experience in a developer capacity is also acceptable for this position.  You will have demonstrated the following competencies to the proficiency level appropriate to the seniority of the role; * JAVA programming experience as the core language, including Spring Boot. * Fluent in writing JAVA coding. * Experience with Kafka or a similar platform. * Experience with Scala and Spark. * Integrating with backing services, such as PostgreSQL, Redis or S3 * Good engineering practices including continuous delivery, clean code, documentation, defensive programming, automated testing and code reviews * Working in Agile development and/or DevOps teams * Using GitHub/GitLab for source control * Test Driven Development with appropriate tools and frameworks * Experience in Big Data technologies * Experience in Public Cloud services, such as AWS Aker Systems Attributes At Aker we work as a team; we are collaborative, hardworking, open, and delivery obsessed. There is no blame culture here: try things, and take responsibility for the outcomes. You are always part of the wider Aker. We help our colleagues and take pride in successfully achieving difficult tasks. We run towards problems and help to solve them. Communicate always, do so accurately and in a timely fashion. In return, we offer a competitive salary, 25 days holiday plus bank holidays, company paid medical insurance and life assurance, pension scheme, annual training allowance, wellbeing allowance, virtual GP, Employee Assistance plan and more. Equal Opportunities Aker Systems fosters a diverse environment that encourages openness in its communications and is committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, age, marital status, national origin, citizenship status, disability, veteran status or other personal characteristics. We embrace differences of opinion and diversity because they help challenge us and find new groundbreaking technical solutions.