Delivery Lead (Data Engineering)

📍 Location: London / Watford, UK
🕒 Employment Type: Contract
📅 Duration: 6+ Months
🏢 Work Model: Hybrid

Role Overview:

We are seeking an experienced Delivery Lead – Data Engineering to lead a large-scale Agile delivery program focused on lottery transaction reconciliation and financial balancing platforms. The ideal candidate will bring strong delivery leadership, deep data engineering expertise, and extensive experience managing high-volume transactional systems within regulated environments.

This role requires a blend of program delivery management, stakeholder engagement, vendor coordination, and technical oversight of modern data engineering solutions built primarily using Python technologies.

Key Responsibilities:

Lead end-to-end delivery of a complex data engineering program focused on transaction reconciliation and financial balancing.
Own delivery governance, sprint planning, execution management, and release coordination across multiple engineering teams.
Provide delivery leadership and technical guidance to Python-based data engineering teams.
Drive implementation of scalable, high-volume data processing and reconciliation solutions.
Ensure data accuracy, completeness, traceability, auditability, and compliance within regulated financial environments.
Act as the primary point of contact for senior business stakeholders, technical leadership, and external vendors.
Manage delivery within a multi-vendor ecosystem, ensuring alignment, accountability, and smooth integration between teams.
Coordinate cross-functional dependencies, integrations, and delivery handoffs across platforms and vendors.
Translate complex reconciliation and financial balancing rules into robust data engineering solutions.
Define and track delivery KPIs, quality metrics, governance standards, and continuous improvement initiatives.
Proactively manage delivery risks, escalations, blockers, and issue resolution.
Drive automation, observability, monitoring, and operational excellence across data pipelines and workflows.
Ensure adherence to Agile methodologies, engineering standards, and best practices.
Mentor senior engineers and promote a collaborative, high-performance engineering culture.

Required Skills & Experience:

15+ years of overall IT experience with strong expertise in data engineering and enterprise delivery leadership.
Proven experience leading large-scale data engineering or reconciliation platforms in financial or transactional environments.
Strong understanding of transaction processing, reconciliation, financial balancing, and audit-compliant systems.
Hands-on knowledge of Python-based data engineering ecosystems and modern data platforms.
Experience managing Agile delivery across multiple distributed engineering teams.
Strong stakeholder management and communication skills with the ability to engage senior leadership.
Experience working within multi-vendor delivery environments.
Expertise in delivery governance, release management, risk management, and quality assurance.
Strong understanding of scalable data architectures, ETL/ELT pipelines, and data observability practices.
Experience with cloud-based data platforms and enterprise data engineering practices is highly desirable.

About Sperton

This position is being managed by Sperton, a global talent partner connecting high-performing professionals with leading organizations worldwide.

Workplace & Culture at Sperton

At Sperton, we believe that great results come from great people.
Our culture is built on trust, collaboration, and a shared passion for delivering quality in everything we do.

We are a Norwegian-owned international company with colleagues across Europe, Asia, and the USA, working together seamlessly across time zones and cultures. Our teams are diverse, yet united by the same goal — to connect people and companies in meaningful ways.

We value openness, initiative, and continuous learning. Everyone at Sperton is encouraged to take ownership, share ideas, and challenge existing ways of working to make our solutions even better.

Even though we operate globally, our approach is personal. We take pride in creating a supportive and inclusive environment where people feel heard, respected, and motivated to grow — both professionally and personally.

Delivery Lead (Data Engineering)

Lead a high-impact data engineering delivery program driving lottery transaction reconciliation, financial balancing, and scalable Python-based data solutions.