Working at CreateFuture
CreateFuture is an AI-native consulting partner where people do work that matters and are supported to do it well. We work alongside organisations such as PayPal, adidas, NatWest, FanDuel and Money Saving Expert, building digital products and services that make a difference while always putting people first.
We’re a team of creators. We write code, shape delivery, build go-to-market strategies, develop AI solutions and create the practices that support our people. We work side by side with our clients, challenging what’s not working and helping them to build the future. Our commitment to craft, quality, and culture has helped us scale to over 600 people in just a few years.
CreateFuture is a Great Place to Work-Certified™ company and has won Best Workplaces UK multiple years in a row.
Join us on our journey. Let’s create tomorrow, together, today.
We are looking for a Senior Data Engineer to join our data team, taking ownership of the design, delivery, and reliability of production data pipelines built on platforms like Snowflake / Databricks, Python, and PySpark. You'll work with a high degree of autonomy, taking on the more complex and ambiguous data engineering challenges across client engagements, while mentoring junior engineers and helping to raise the bar on engineering practice. You'll collaborate closely with architects, product teams, and client stakeholders to translate data requirements into robust, maintainable solutions.
What you'll be doing:- Take ownership of designing, building, and maintaining scalable, production-ready data pipelines using AWS data services (e.g., AWS Glue, EMR, S3, Redshift, Athena), Python, and PySpark, with minimal supervision
- Make sound technical decisions on pipeline architecture, data modelling, and tooling, weighing up trade-offs in performance, cost, and maintainability
- Mentor and support junior and mid-level data engineers, reviewing code and sharing knowledge to raise the standard of delivery across the team
- Own and continuously improve CI/CD pipelines for data engineering workflows, ensuring reliable, repeatable deployments
- Troubleshoot and resolve complex issues in live data pipelines, acting as a point of escalation for the wider team
- Partner with cross-functional teams and client stakeholders to understand data requirements and shape them into technical solutions
- Have designed and operated production data pipelines on a modern cloud data platform, AWS (Glue, EMR, Redshift, S3/Lake Formation), Databricks, Snowflake or comparable, and can talk about which of those decisions would travel to a different one, and which wouldn't.
- Have owned orchestration in production, dependency design, retries, SLAs, and the observability that tells you a pipeline failed before the client does.
- Have landed data from awkward sources: APIs, CDC off operational databases, files that change shape without telling you.
- Have deep SQL skills and hands-on experience with data modelling (e.g., Kimball, medallion/lakehouse patterns, or domain-driven modelling) — this is the load-bearing, provider-agnostic skill underneath almost all of our pipeline work
- Have strong Python and PySpark for batch processing, with production-grade, well-tested code. The bulk of this work is batch and ELT, but you'll need to have experienced event-driven or micro-batch pipelines and know where the design assumptions stop holding. )
- Have experience owning the delivery of data engineering work with limited oversight, including CI/CD management and support
- Have experience mentoring or supporting the development of less experienced engineers
- Are comfortable working directly with stakeholders to shape technical solutions from ambiguous requirements, presenting your work, estimation and discussing tradeoffs and risks.
We trust people to do their best work. That means flexibility over rigid rules, impact over activity, and real investment in your growth both professionally and personally. You’ll be part of a supportive, and friendly culture, surrounded by smart, curious people who care deeply about what they do.
We offer flexible working, including hybrid and remote options. Our office hubs are located in Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, London and Bulgaria, with occasional travel to client sites or CreateFuture offices when needed.
We trust you to manage your time balancing collaboration with client time and focused work. What matters is the impact you have, not how busy you look.
Our hiring processWe try to keep our hiring process clear, fair and respectful of your time. We aim to get back to everyone who applies and we will be upfront about where you are in the process.
It usually looks like this:
- Call with our Talent Acquisition Team
- Role specific capability interview
Depending on the role, we might also ask you to do a short presentation, a practical or technical task or have a values focused conversation. We will explain what is involved before anything happens.
Inclusion at CreateFutureWe believe diverse teams build better workplaces and better products. We want CreateFuture to be a place where people feel able to be themselves and do their best work.
If you need any adjustments or support during the application process, just. We will do what we can to help.
We look forward to your application!
Skills Required
- Significant hands-on experience with a modern cloud data platform such as Microsoft Fabric, Databricks, Snowflake, or Synapse, including production data pipeline design and operation.
- Deep SQL skills and hands-on data modeling experience, including Kimball, medallion/lakehouse, or domain-driven modeling.
- Strong proficiency in Python and PySpark for batch data processing, with experience writing production-grade, well-tested code.
- Experience owning data engineering delivery with limited oversight, including CI/CD management and support.
- Experience mentoring or supporting less experienced engineers.
- Ability to work directly with stakeholders to shape technical solutions from ambiguous requirements.
What We Do
CreateFuture was built to take action. With our 500-strong team of software engineering, strategy and design experts, across Edinburgh, Leeds, London and Manchester, we’re determined to get you exactly what you need. As with our past clients, we get to the root of your challenge and do everything it takes to create positive solutions by building digital products and services that solve problems. With years of experience helping catalyse major organisations into action, our rapid growth has been driven by people who seek to understand before they solve. We care about our craft. We challenge each other by asking, “Why not?”. And we’re proud to collaborate and partner with the likes of PayPal, adidas, FanDuel, Money Saving Expert, Penguin Random House, Yorkshire Building Society and more. With CreateFuture, our people are at the forefront of every outcome and we know that a strong team dynamic is critical to success, so we’ll be there for you every step of the way. We draw on their unique skills for problem-solving – and helping your teams unleash their potential too. Put simply, we want to be an organisation that people want to work for and want to work with. You don’t need to have all the answers. Share your problem and we’ll go from there. Let’s create something incredible, together, today.
