Senior Data Pipeline Engineer

Location: Brighton or London (office-based) – travel to UK client sites required

Salary: £70,000–£80,000 base

Role type: Full-time, permanent

Department: Technology Consulting – Observability Practice

Role Overview

NETbuilder is building an Observability Practice, and this is a senior delivery hire into it. You will join as a senior data pipeline engineer, working hands-on inside enterprise client teams to architect, deploy and operate the observability platforms and telemetry pipelines that sit at the heart of modern observability.

This is primarily a hands-on delivery role – a senior individual-contributor position rather than a line-management one. Your focus is engineering across two fronts: designing and deploying the observability platforms themselves, and building the data pipelines that collect, route, transform, enrich and deliver telemetry reliably and cost-effectively across complex enterprise environments.

You will be the senior technical authority on observability platform architecture and data pipelines for the engagements you work on. While there is no permanent team to manage, on specific engagements you will provide technical leadership – mentoring junior engineers, planning the workstream and allocating tasks across the delivery team.

Consulting experience is preferred but not essential – what matters most is deep, current, hands-on expertise with industry-standard observability platforms and their pipeline and transformation tooling. If you would rather solve hard data-engineering and platform problems and lead through expertise than carry permanent people-management responsibility, this is the role.

Key Responsibilities

Pipeline Engineering & Delivery

• Design, build and operate telemetry pipelines that collect, route, transform, enrich, reduce and mask logs, metrics and traces at enterprise scale
• Develop and maintain data transformation logic – parsing, restructuring, filtering and normalising telemetry across formats and schemas
• Optimise pipelines for data quality, cost control and performance – reducing noise and volume without losing signal
• Onboard complex applications and data sources onto observability platforms
• Build, test and document reusable pipeline configurations, processors and templates
• Monitor pipeline health and throughput, and troubleshoot ingestion, routing and delivery issues

Platform Architecture & Deployment

• Architect observability platform deployments – topology, sizing, high availability, resilience and scaling – to meet enterprise client requirements
• Deploy, configure and operate observability platforms and their collection/agent fleets across cloud, hybrid and on-premises environments
• Define deployment patterns and infrastructure-as-code for repeatable, automated platform rollouts
• Integrate observability platforms with client infrastructure, data sources and downstream destinations
• Own platform health, upgrades and capacity planning, and keep architecture and deployment documentation current

Client Delivery

• Deliver observability platform and pipeline engagements directly with enterprise clients as a senior practitioner
• Own delivery outcomes for the platform and pipeline workstreams on assigned engagements
• Act as senior technical authority and escalation point for platform architecture, deployment and data pipeline issues
• Lead troubleshooting and root-cause analysis across enterprise observability platforms and telemetry pipelines
• Support pre-sales with technical scoping and solution design for platform and pipeline work
• Translate client requirements into platform and pipeline designs that balance coverage, cost and compliance

Engagement Leadership & Mentoring

This is engagement-scoped technical leadership rather than permanent line management – on specific engagements you will:

• Provide technical leadership as the senior practitioner, setting direction and quality standards for the platform and pipeline workstream
• Plan the workstream – scope the work, sequence the tasks and allocate them across the engagement delivery team where required
• Mentor and coach junior engineers and consultants working alongside you, sharing platform and pipeline expertise on the job
• Co-ordinate with the wider engagement team and report progress on the workstream

Tooling & Practice Contribution

• Work hands-on across the observability tool landscape (see preferred tools below), applying each platform's architecture, deployment and data-pipelining capabilities
• Stay current with platform capabilities, roadmaps and certifications
• Contribute to NETbuilder's platform and pipeline methodology, toolkits and reusable assets

Required Qualifications and Experience

• Senior data pipeline engineering experience: demonstrable hands-on track record designing, building and operating telemetry/observability data pipelines at enterprise scale
• Platform architecture and deployment experience: hands-on experience designing, deploying and operating observability platforms (topology, sizing, high availability and scaling) across cloud, hybrid and on-premises environments
• Data transformation expertise: strong practical experience with parsing, routing, filtering, enrichment and normalisation of log, metric and trace data
• Tooling experience: hands-on experience with the architecture, deployment and data-pipelining functionality of one or more industry-standard observability platforms (see preferred tools below)
• Engagement leadership: comfortable mentoring junior engineers and planning and allocating tasks within a delivery team on an engagement, without formal line-management authority
• Consulting experience: preferred but not essential – comfortable working directly within enterprise client teams

Preferred Tool Experience

Hands-on experience with the architecture, deployment and data-pipelining functionality of one or more of the following platforms, in order of preference:

• Bindplane (ObservIQ / Google)
• Dynatrace (OpenPipeline)
• OpenTelemetry (Collector – receivers, processors and exporters)
• Cribl (Stream)
• Elastic (ingest pipelines)
• Splunk

Preferred Certifications

Certification in one or more of the following is preferred:

• Dynatrace Professional (Dynatrace Master advantageous)
• OpenTelemetry Certified Associate (OTCA) – also covers Bindplane, which is OpenTelemetry-native
• Cribl Certified Engineer (CC Engineer) or Cribl Certified Observability Engineer – Admin (CCOE Admin)
• Elastic Certified Engineer
• Splunk Enterprise Certified Architect

Key Skills

• Platform architecture and deployment: designing observability platform topology (sizing, HA, scaling) and deploying/automating platform and pipeline infrastructure as code
• Pipeline and transformation tooling: deep expertise in one or more observability platforms and their transformation languages and processors
• OpenTelemetry: strong working knowledge of the OpenTelemetry Collector (receivers, processors, exporters) and OTLP
• Scripting and automation: Python, Bash
• Data formats and parsing: JSON, regex, syslog, and common log, metric and trace formats
• Cloud platform knowledge: AWS, Azure, and/or GCP
• Container and orchestration: Kubernetes, Docker, OpenShift
• Familiar with delivery and project tooling: JIRA, Confluence, ServiceNow

About You

• A hands-on engineer who would rather architect and build a solution than sit in a management meeting
• Happy to lead through expertise – mentoring others, planning a workstream and giving direction on an engagement, even without a formal management title
• Comfortable working directly inside enterprise client teams and engaging senior stakeholders
• Rigorous about data quality, cost and reliability – you care about getting the right signal at the right price
• Self-managing, delivery-focused and comfortable in a fast-moving environment
• Naturally curious – you keep pace with a fast-evolving observability tooling landscape

About NETbuilder

NETbuilder is a leading provider of digital solutions, software, consulting and managed services. We work across multiple sectors with specialist expertise in financial services, government, and commercial markets. Since 1999 we have been providing end-to-end solutions across Digital Delivery, Development and Technology. At our core we are a Digital Transformation consultancy with capabilities for onsite, onshore and offshore delivery.

You will join a world-class team of experienced consultants, helping to build a new observability practice within the NETbuilder group.

Why NETbuilder

• Join a new observability practice as a senior technical specialist, working with cutting-edge observability platforms
• Work with enterprise clients across multiple sectors
• Competitive base salary: £70,000–£80,000
• Continuous investment in professional development and certification
• High-performance, close-knit team culture where individual contribution is recognised
• Office-based in Brighton or London, with travel to enterprise client sites

Pay: £70,000.00-£80,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• Company pension

Application question(s):

• Do you have at least 5 years of hands-on experience designing, building and operating telemetry or observability data pipelines in enterprise environments?
• Are you willing to work from either our Brighton or London office and travel to UK client sites as required?

Work authorisation:

• United Kingdom (required)

Work Location: Hybrid remote in London EC3A 6AB