Technical Lead - Data Engineering

THE CARWOW GROUP

Carwow Group is driven by a passion for getting people into cars. But not just any car, the right car. That’s why we are building the go-to destination for car-changing. Designed to reach drivers everywhere with our trail-blazing portfolio of personality rich automotive brands; Carwow, Auto Express, evo, Driving Electric and Car Buyer.

What started as a simple reviews site, is now one of the largest online car-changing destinations in Europe - over 10m customers have used Carwow to help them buy and sell cars since its inception. Last year we grew over 50% with nearly £3bn worth of cars bought on site, while £1.8bn of cars were listed for sale through our Sell My Car service.

In 2024 we went big and acquired Autovia, doubling our audience overnight. Together we now have one of the biggest YouTube channels in the world with over 1.1 billion annual views, sell 1.2 million print copies of our magazines and have an annual web content reach over 350 million.

WHY JOIN US?

We are winners of the prestigious Culture 100 award that recognises the most loved and happiest tech companies to work for! We have just raised $52m in funding led by global venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners (an early backer of LinkedIn and Shopify) to accelerate our growth plans!

As pioneers, we’re always driving for new territory and positive change, so our work as a group is never done. Where others see difficulty, it’s our responsibility to see possibility – building new experiences, launching new titles and listening to drivers.

Being a part of Carwow Group means championing drivers and the automotive industry, acting as a disrupter and never being afraid to fail (but learning fast when we do!).

Our team of 500 employees across the UK, Germany, Spain and Portugal are revolutionising car-changing and we are fast expanding our mission across every single brand and country we operate in, so jump in!

ABOUT THE TEAM

As a team our mission is to empower all Carwow teams with access to reliable, actionable data and enable informed decision-making through scalable and secure data platforms.

We’re investing heavily in our Data Engineering capabilities at carwow, ensuring we have the expertise to deliver infrastructure and data-driven best practices that support the growing needs of our Data Analytics team. We build our ETL pipelines in Python and SQL, using Airflow to automate workflows, with data ingested into a Snowflake warehouse from various in-house and 3rd party sources and Terraform to manage infrastructure.

Our tech stack is primarily Ruby on Rails using PostgreSQL, all hosted on Heroku. We use Terraform to manage our infrastructure and encourage teams to be involved in how we deploy and run our code in Production.

You'll be supported by one of our Engineering Managers who are there to help you with your career progression and ensure that the team you are on are working as well as they can - continuously improving!

We have a career progression framework that means you know what is expected of you and how you can progress through our career ladder and your EM will work with you to make sure you are happy, fulfilled, and doing the best work you can be doing.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• You will be the Technical Lead within the Data Engineering squad, working simultaneously with the Principal Engineer, Product Manager and Engineering Manager whilst partnering closely with our Analytics & Data Science team to help enhance their productivity
• You will help to shape the technical strategy for our approach to building data products and the future of Data Engineering at carwow by providing knowledge and expertise in optimum practices and implementation. This includes developing and testing product improvements
• You will lead the Data Engineering team in scoping how new features can be built and how Stakeholder needs can be met while making pragmatic technical trade-offs
• Develop and enhance our data architecture and pipelines to enable us to deliver versus our business goals
• Collaborate with, and mentor your team by reviewing code, monitoring and guiding your team's software in production. Collaborate with other Stakeholders helping them to do their finest work and deliver projects according to our values and brand
• Define a roadmap of initiatives to both improve our current infrastructure and assist other teams in creating new data products.
• Contribute to a diverse Engineering culture based on customer-centricity, high-quality code, data-driven outcomes, technical innovation and business impact
• Identify the important technical differentiating factors of our data product, and leverage those in our architecture

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Previous experience as a Senior Data Engineer or Technical Lead
• Knowledge of data modelling and schema design with a focus on efficiency, accuracy and scalability
• Experience with SQL, Python, data infrastructure, SQL ETL/ELT knowledge, experience with DAGs to oversee script dependencies with tools like dbt, Airflow, Snowflake, Terraform
• It's preferred but not essential if you have experience in Ruby, data visualisation tools (e.g. Looker, Tableau, Power BI), Amplitude, DevOps, Circle CI/CD, AWS
• Experience guiding and mentoring distributed teams of Engineers to success, working cross-functionally with Product Managers, Stakeholders, and other Developers
• A desire to learn continuously, share your knowledge, communicate effectively and build a product in close collaboration with others. You raise the bar for technical quality and sharing your expertise
• Experience delivering work that has measurable impact and value to stakeholders – early and often. You actively scope work and drive projects forward
• You are fully engaged in the product development life cycle, helping to shape your team’s roadmap

You’re not expected to be an expert in all of these technologies and tools, we are happy to support your learning journey. If you’re unsure about any of the above, please apply.

WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU

• Fully remote working role, with offices in London, Munich, Madrid, and Porto that you can work from
• 4-5 trips to the London office for social and team bonding events
• Competitive salary to fund that dream holiday to Bali
• Matched pension contributions for a peaceful retirement
• Share options - when we thrive, so do you!
• Vitality Private Healthcare, for peace of mind, plus eyecare vouchers
• Life Assurance for (even more) peace of mind
• Monthly coaching sessions with Spill - our mental wellbeing partner
• Enhanced holiday package, plus Bank Holidays
  • 28 days annual leave
  • 1 day for your wedding
  • 1 day off when you move house - because moving is hard enough without work!
  • For your third year anniversary, get 30 days of annual leave per year
  • For your tenth year anniversary, get 35 days of annual leave per year
  • Option to buy 3 extra days of holiday per year
• Work from abroad for a month
• Inclusive parental, partner and shared parental leave, fertility treatment and pregnancy loss policies
• Bubble childcare support and discounted nanny fees for little ones
• The latest tech (Macbook or Surface) to power your gif-sending talents
• Up to £500/€550 home office allowance for that massage chair you’ve been talking about
• Generous learning and development budget to help you master your craft
• Regular social events:, tech lunches, coffee with the exec sessions, book clubs, social events/anything else you pester us for
• Refer a friend, get paid. Repeat for infinite money
• Lunch & learns and Carwow Classrooms with expert speakers who are here for a free lunch

Diversity and inclusion is an integral part of our culture. We know that diverse teams are strong teams, so we welcome those with alternative identities, backgrounds, and experiences to apply for this position. We make recruiting decisions based on experience, skills and potential, so all our applicants are treated fairly and equally.