Established in 1981 with a single store in the Northwest of England, the JD Group is a leading omni-channel retailer of Sports Fashion, Outdoors and Gyms with our colleagues working in stores across several retail fascias in many markets around the world.
JD Sports Fashion Plc was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1996 and has been a FTSE100 publicly quoted company since 2019 and continues to grow in the UK and internationally.
We want to be the leading global omnichannel retailer in the sports and outdoor industry. To be a part of this successful company and help us to achieve this you will have the desire to ingrain our strategic goals of being a people-led, innovative and customer-focused organisation which provides operational excellence whilst identifying new areas of growth as part of our day to day objectives.
Head of Data Engineering
We are seeking a visionary, delivery-focused Head of Data Engineering to lead the transformation of JD’s enterprise data engineering capabilities. Reporting to the Group Director of Data & AI, you will shape a modern, scalable, and secure data estate that accelerates analytics, AI, and digital innovation across the Group.
This role is based out of our Bury office with the expectation that the successful candidate will be in the office 4 days a week leading a Data Engineering function of 15+ within the wider Data & AI organisation, shaping the strategic direction, capability, standards, and operational excellence of data engineering across the group and driving the evolution of our enterprise data engineering capabilities across our cloud and legacy environments.
Your remit spans cloud platform engineering, pipeline automation, real-time data processing, curation, and the enablement of business intelligence, data science and AI teams. You will set the vision for the future of our data infrastructure, ensuring scalability, resilience, security, commercial impact, and alignment to the Group’s strategic objectives. You will manage a highly skilled team of data engineers, while partnering with high-level stakeholders across technology and business functions to ensure the data foundation unlocks measurable value.
Responsibilities:
Strategic Leadership & Vision:
Define and own the long term data engineering strategy and roadmap driving modernisation, standardisation, and cloud-first best practices
Lead the migration away from legacy data systems into modern, scalable cloud platforms, ensuring scalability and cost-optimised use of cloud services
Identify new technologies, patterns, and methodologies (e.g., streaming, ML/AI enablement, data lineage, orchestration) that advance our capabilities
Champion engineering excellence, governance, data quality, and enterprise-grade reliability across all teams and pipelines
Leadership & People Development:
Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing team of data engineering professionals, setting clear expectations and fostering a culture of excellence, collaboration, and continuous improvement
Establish clear role pathways, skills development plans, and a culture of continuous improvement.
Drive strong engineering culture, collaboration, and accountability across the team
Manage team capacity, resourcing, and prioritisation to meet business demand effectively
Platform & Engineering Delivery
Oversee the design, build, and optimisation of cloud-based data pipelines, datasets, and infrastructure supporting analytics, reporting, and AI products
Ensure data engineering teams deliver reliable and efficient pipelines for ingestion, transformation, enrichment, and curation of large-scale data
Establish and enforce engineering standards across CI/CD, version control, data modelling, documentation, observability, and code quality
Ensure the creation of trusted, governed data models and consumption layers for downstream stakeholders
Stakeholder Collaboration & Influence
Build trusted relationships with senior business leaders, acting as a strategic partner to help teams utilise data effectively and make informed decisions
Work with senior business stakeholders to understand priorities, ensuring data engineering directly enables commercial, operational, and strategic outcomes
Partner closely with Data Science, BI, Product, Cloud Infrastructure, Security, and Architecture teams to deliver integrated and scalable solutions
Communicate complex technical concepts clearly and frame engineering decisions in terms of business impact
Governance, Security & Compliance
Ensure data platforms meet regulatory, security, and compliance requirements, including secure pipeline design, access control, and lineage
Embed good governance practices across metadata, cataloguing, quality, and monitoring
Define and maintain data engineering standards, documentation, and policies to ensure consistency, compliance, and long-term maintainability
Role Objectives & KPIs
Deliver a scalable, modern, and cost-efficient enterprise data platform
Reduce cloud spend and cost to serve through optimisation and engineering standards
Improve the reliability, performance, and availability of mission-critical data pipelines
Increase data quality, consistency, and usability across priority domains
Strengthen engineering capability and maturity through talent development, best practice standard and frameworks
Improved productivity and engagement across Data Engineering teams
On-time delivery of strategic data initiatives in support of analytics, AI, and digital transformation goals
Skills and Experience:
Significant senior-level experience in Data Engineering leadership roles (Head, Director, or equivalent) within fast-paced, complex organisations
At least five years’ experience managing and developing high-performing Data Engineering teams
Deep expertise in cloud data engineering within GCP, pipelines, orchestration, and distributed data processing
Strong background in SQL, Python, CI/CD, and software engineering best practices
Experience designing and scaling data platforms, data models, and ingestion frameworks across structured and unstructured sources
Understanding of ML/AI enablement, data curation strategies, and metadata/lineage tooling
Proven ability to drive organisational change, modernise technology stacks, and embed best practices
Proven ability to coach and mentor technical teams, raising capability and embedding high delivery standards
Skilled at simplifying complexity and embedding standards that balance technical rigour with business value and cost
Effective communicator who can influence and engage senior stakeholders across business and technology domains who can provide authoritative guidance
Experience in large-scale, multi-brand, or global enterprises; retail experience is advantageous
Demonstrated ability to learn and adopt new technologies, especially emerging AI capabilities
Strong leadership and people development skills to develop a growing team of data engineering professionals and and foster the adoption of data-driven decision-making across the business
We know our colleagues work tirelessly to make JD Sports the success it is today, and in turn, we offer them some amazing benefits, including staff Discount On JD Group and other brands within the organisation and personal development opportunities to learn and develop at work. Thank you for your time #JD
We know our colleagues work tirelessly to make JD Sports the success it is today and in turn, we offer them some amazing benefits including staff Discount On JD Group and other brands within the organisation and personal development opportunities to learn and develop at work.
Thank you for your time
#JD
