* 5+ years in Data Engineering / Data Platform / AI Engineering / Advanced Analytics, ideally in large or regulated organisations.
* Proven experience designing and building cloud data platforms and data lakehouse architectures (preferably AWS ).
* Hands-on experience with Databricks or EMR for large-scale data transformation.
* Strong background in data ingestion and ETL .
* Experience with CDC-based pipelines and event-driven architectures for ingesting operational/transactional data.
* Experience integrating on-premise data lakes with cloud platforms in hybrid architectures .
* Experience enabling AI/ML solutions in production.
* Hands-on involvement in data governance, data quality, data rules and guardrails .
* Experience working with BI and business stakeholders on KPI design and data modelling for reporting/visualisation .