Senior Engineering Manager (Data Platform)

The role

You will lead and grow a high-performing data engineering team. You will own the engineering strategy, execution, and organizational health for the data foundation that supports analytics, ML, and AI initiatives.

What you will do

• Lead and grow a high-performing data engineering team
• Coach and develop engineers through regular feedback and mentorship
• Define and drive the long-term vision for Preply's data foundation
• Identify and prioritize high-impact opportunities with cross-functional partners
• Own execution and delivery by translating strategy into realistic plans
• Provide technical leadership for architecture across batch and streaming ingestion
• Own data reliability and trust by establishing SLOs and observability
• Champion engineering best practices and continuous improvements
• Collaborate cross-functionally to align on priorities and outcomes
• Own hiring quality, team composition, and operating model

Required qualifications

• 8+ years of software or data engineering experience
• 5+ years in engineering management
• Experience leading data or platform engineering teams
• People-centric approach and team-building skills
• Strong technical judgment and systems thinking
• Track record of hiring, coaching, and retaining high-performing teams
• Ability to work closely with Analytics, Data Science, ML, and Product partners
• Clear communication and stakeholder leadership
• Track record of driving performance and achieving measurable goals
• Ethical leadership demonstrating empathy, transparency, and accountability

Nice to have

• Hands-on familiarity with the modern data stack (Spark, Flink, Kafka, Debezium, Airflow, dbt, or similar)
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS/GCP or equivalent) and modern DevOps practices
• Experience leading teams that built data platforms used by multiple teams in fast-growing companies
• Experience running a data platform as a product
• Experience with data governance, privacy, and compliance at ingestion time
• Familiarity with feature stores, ML data pipelines, or preparing data for GenAI / RAG use cases
• AI Expertise using Agentic AI to support architecture, planning, and decision-making

Benefits

• Open, collaborative, dynamic, and diverse culture
• Monthly allowance for lessons on Preply.com
• Learning & Development budget
• Time off for self-development
• Competitive financial package with equity
• Leave allowance
• Health insurance
• Access to free mental health support platforms
• Access to Gympass-partnered wellness and gym centers throughout London

About the company

Preply is a category-defining company that helps people discover tutors and craft personalised learning journeys. They have reached unicorn status with a $150M Series D.