Lead Data Engineer

Role Overview

The Data and Common Application Platform tribe is seeking a Data Engineer/Senior Data Engineer who possesses strong technical abilities, leadership qualities, and a sense of responsibility. Working collaboratively with the team, the successful candidate will help establish the foundations of the new Data Management Platform (DMP) and take part in designing, developing, testing, and deploying features and components to create new Data Products.

The squad is based in both Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) and Belgium (La Hulpe).

Education and experience

• 10+ years’ experience in systems development; with 2 years exposure to the team leader role
• Proven expertise in data engineering and software development practices.

• Hands-on experience on a Data Management Platform.

Role Responsibilities

The candidate will join the Data Management Platform foundation team and will collaborate to deliver a secure, scalable and reliable Data Management Platform (DMP), providing the foundational services and shared libraries that enable product squads across the organization to focus on delivering meaningful business value.

• Own the end-to-end technical vision for one or more core components of the Data Management Platform, ensuring long-term scalability, resilience, and alignment with enterprise standards.
• Drive design decisions (not just implementation) and actively contribute to design reviews across teams.
• Anticipate future platform needs (capacity, performance, security, governance) and proactively evolve the platform accordingly.
• Define and enforce engineering standards, patterns, and reference architectures for data pipelines, storage, and processing.
• Be accountable for the technical delivery of complex, cross-team initiatives, including planning, risk management, and execution.
• Ensure operational excellence: observability, monitoring, incident prevention, and production stability across the platform.
• Lead root-cause analysis for major incidents and drive systemic improvements, not just fixes.
• Act as a technical lead and coach for multiple engineers, helping them grow in autonomy, design skills, and platform understanding.
• Mentor senior and less senior engineers, setting a high bar for engineering craftsmanship.
• Coordinate and guide the work of multiple contributors or a small group of teams, ensuring consistency and alignment.
• Foster a strong engineering culture: knowledge sharing, documentation, reuse, and continuous improvement.
• Translate complex technical topics into clear, actionable insights for non-technical stakeholders.
• Contribute to roadmap definition, technical feasibility assessments, and prioritization discussions.

Technical Skills

Must Have:

• Advanced hands-on expertise with Java 11 and Java 17.
• Strong scripting skills (Unix Shell or Python).
• Solid understanding of containerization technologies (OpenShift or Kubernetes).
• Proven experience with Helm for configuration management and containerized deployments.
• Experience with large-scale object storage such as Amazon S3 or equivalent solutions.
• Proven experience with at least one of the data management tools such as Spark or Kafka
• Understanding of Data Engineering, Data lake, Data Warehousing and Medallion architecture concept.
• Hands-on experience in CI/CD environments (Git, Jenkins, Maven) and tools for code coverage and static/dynamic analysis.
• Experience with PKI/SSL for secure communications and certificate-based authentication.
• Practical experience with Agile/Scrum methodologies and collaboration tools (JIRA, Confluence, Bitbucket, GitHub).

Good to have

• Experience with Apache Airflow as a job orchestration and workflow management tool
• Experience with Elasticsearch/Kibana.
• Experience with Infrastructure as code as such Argo CD, Terraform is a plus

Competency profile

• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to lead, coach, and support junior team members.
• Passion for continuous improvement and innovation.
• Team-oriented mindset and comfort working in a multicultural environment.
• Quick learner with a strong appetite for new technologies.
• Strong interpersonal skills and customer-centric approach.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment.

What we offer

We give you the freedom to be yourself. We are creating an environment of unique individuals – like you – with different perspectives on the financial industry and the world. A diverse and inclusive environment in which everyone’s voice counts and where you can reach your full potential.

We are committed to an inclusive and accessible recruitment process. If you require a reasonable accommodation related to accessibility during your application or interview, please contact accessibility-Sysgroup@swift.com or indicate this in your application.

Please note that this mailbox is not monitored for general recruitment enquiries and should only be used for accessibility or accommodation-related requests (for example related to vision, hearing or neurodiversity).

All requests are confidential and will not affect your candidacy.

Don’t meet every single requirement? At Swift, we are dedicated to building a workplace where people can bring their full selves and ideas to the team, so if you are excited about this role, we encourage you to apply even if you do not meet every single qualification.