Data Engineering Lead

At SiteMinder we believe the individual contributions of our employees are what drive our success. That’s why we hire and encourage diverse teams that include and respect a variety of voices, identities, backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. Our diverse and inclusive culture enables our employees to bring their unique selves to work and be proud of doing so. It’s in our differences that we will keep revolutionising the way for our customers. We are better together!

What We Do…

We’re people who love technology but know that hoteliers just want things to be simple. So since 2006 we’ve been constantly innovating our world-leading hotel commerce platform to help accommodation owners find and book more guests online - quickly and simply.

We’ve helped everyone from boutique hotels to big chains, enabling travellers to book igloos, cabins, castles, holiday parks, campsites, pubs, resorts, Airbnbs, and everything in between.

And today, we’re the world’s leading open hotel commerce platform, supporting 56,000 hotels in 150+ countries - with over 140 million reservations processed by SiteMinder’s technology every year.

About the Data Engineering Lead Role…
We are looking for a hands-on Data Engineering Lead to provide technical direction and people leadership for a small team of data engineers. You will help shape the evolution of SiteMinder’s cloud data platform while continuing to contribute directly to the design and delivery of data engineering solutions.

This is a player-coach role. You will spend approximately 70% of your time on data engineering projects and 30% on Data Operations, reliability, and support. You will work across Databricks, Snowflake, dbt, AWS, Terraform, Python, SQL, and related technologies.

You will partner with engineering, product, finance, commercial, and analytics stakeholders to turn business needs into trusted, maintainable data solutions. You will also help establish the engineering standards, operating practices, and team capabilities needed to scale our data platform.

What you’ll do…

Technical leadership

• Set technical direction for data engineering projects and make pragmatic architecture decisions

• Lead design reviews and establish reusable patterns for ingestion, transformation, orchestration, data modelling, testing, deployment, and observability

• Promote engineering best practices across code quality, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, security, documentation, and operational readiness

• Guide the adoption and effective use of Databricks, Snowflake, dbt, AWS, and supporting platform technologies

• Identify opportunities to improve platform scalability, reliability, performance, data quality, and cost efficiency

• Provide hands-on technical contribution to complex data pipelines, integrations, transformations, and production issues

People leadership

• Lead, coach, and develop a small team of data engineers through regular feedback, goal-setting, mentoring, and career development

• Support hiring, onboarding, performance management, and capability planning for the team

• Create an environment of ownership, collaboration, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement

• Help team members make sound technical decisions while encouraging autonomy and accountability

Delivery and stakeholder partnership

• Own or contribute to the delivery of data engineering initiatives from discovery and design through implementation and production support

• Translate business and analytical requirements into robust data products and well-defined delivery plans

• Build strong functional knowledge of SiteMinder’s systems and business processes, including applications such as Salesforce and Zuora

• Work effectively with geographically distributed teams and communicate technical decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

• Participate in data discovery, deep-dive analysis, and investigation of complex data issues, communicating findings and recommended actions clearly

Data Operations and reliability

• Help operate and support production data pipelines, datasets, and integrations within agreed service levels.

• Establish effective monitoring, alerting, incident response, root-cause analysis, and problem-management practices.

• Improve data quality through automated testing, validation, reconciliation, lineage, and documentation.

• Manage operational requests and prioritise ad hoc analysis based on business impact and urgency.

• Identify recurring operational issues and convert them into sustainable engineering improvements rather than manual workarounds

 

What you have…

Technical Experience

• Significant professional experience in data engineering, including experience leading technical delivery or mentoring engineers

• Strong hands-on experience with cloud data platforms, including Databricks and/or Snowflake, and production experience with dbt

• Experience designing and implementing data platforms using medallion or comparable layered architecture patterns

• Strong Python and SQL skills, with practical experience writing, testing, debugging, and optimising production data pipelines

• Experience with data modelling, dimensional modelling, data warehousing, fact and dimension tables, slowly changing dimensions, and analytical data products

• Experience building and operating complete ETL or ELT processes, including ingestion, transformation, testing, deployment, and monitoring

• Practical experience with Terraform or another infrastructure-as-code approach

• Experience building bespoke integrations using Python, REST APIs, or similar technologies

• Strong understanding of data reliability, observability, security, access control, and cost management

• Experience working with AWS data services and the ability to choose appropriate services for a given use case

Leadership and collaboration

• Demonstrated ability to lead through influence, make clear technical decisions, and create alignment across teams

• Experience coaching engineers and raising engineering standards across a team

• Strong communication, documentation, and stakeholder-management skills

• A structured and analytical approach to problem-solving, with sound judgment when working independently

• Experience working effectively with geographically distributed and culturally diverse teams

• A practical, delivery-focused mindset suited to a growing technology organisation

Nice to have

• Experience with streaming or event-driven data platforms such as Kafka, Kinesis, or equivalent technologies.

• Experience with AWS services such as Glue, EMR, and Kinesis

• Experience with Spark and large-scale distributed data processing

• Experience with change data capture, near-real-time ingestion, or integration with OLTP systems

• Experience with data governance, data contracts, metadata management, lineage, or master data concepts

• Experience supporting a migration between data platforms, such as Snowflake and Databricks

• Experience in the SaaS, travel, hospitality, or marketplace sectors

 

Our Perks & Benefits…

- Mental health and well-being initiatives

- Generous parental (including secondary) leave policy

- Flexibility to work in a Hybrid model (3 days in-office)

- Paid birthday, study and volunteering leave every year

- Sponsored social clubs, team events, and celebrations

- Employee Resource Groups (ERG) to help you connect and get involved

- Investment in your personal growth offering training for your advancement

 

Does this job sound like you? If yes, we'd love for you to be part of our team! Please send a copy of your resume and our Talent Acquisition team will be in touch.

When you apply, please tell us the pronouns you use and any adjustments you may need during the interview process. We encourage people from underrepresented groups to apply.