Data Practice Lead

Department: Architecture & Engineering

Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time

Location: Remote

Reporting To: Head of Software Development

Description

We’re looking for a Development Practice Lead who can move seamlessly between architecture discussions, hands-on technical guidance, and coaching senior engineers.

This isn’t a delivery or people-management focused role. It’s a technical leadership position across three specialist areas:

Data Engineering (specifically modelling)
Business Intelligence
Oracle E-Business Suite / ODBMS

…and an eye on emerging

AI-enabled Enterprise Architecture

You’ll be line-managing four Technical Leads and partnering with Principal Engineers on architectural direction, solution design, and capability growth across RI Tech.

What you’ll do

Lead the ‘Development Practice’ on matters of Data, BI, and Enterprise Systems; driving ambition and suggesting logic-backed additions to roadmaps
Coach and mentor four tech leads while staying hands-on with architecture reviews and design decisions
Define and enforce technical standards across our data stack: Snowflake, Airflow, AWS, Business Objects, and Oracle
Collaborate with solution architects to evolve River Island’s enterprise data and integration strategy
Review solution proposals and spot anti-patterns in data flow, orchestration, and schema design
Shape best practice around observability (OpenTelemetry), metadata management, and data mesh principles

Tech landscape
You’ll be dealing with:
Databases:

Snowflake (micro-partitioning, clustering, schema design, cost optimisation)
Oracle E-Business Suite, ODBMS and SQL optimisation

Visualisation tools:

BusinessObjects and semantic-layer modelling
PowerBI
Airflow (DAG orchestration, retries/backfills, sensors vs operators)
AWS (cross-account IAM, VPC design, ECS/Lambda trade-offs)
Python, SQL, Terraform, and event-driven microservices
AI-related integration (vector DBs, embeddings pipelines, OpenTelemetry)

What good looks like
You’ve probably:

Led a data engineering or BI function and still enjoy getting your hands dirty in SQL or Python
Successfully – or not – put PoCs together to promote an idea
Designed or reviewed architecture diagrams for distributed data systems
Coached technical leads or principal engineers in delivery and design quality
Balanced pragmatic delivery with clean architecture and performance-minded decisions
You’re opinionated but curious, architecture-literate, and allergic to buzzword managers

What we’re not looking for

Project or delivery managers with no hands-on technical depth
“Heads of BI” who haven’t authored a query in 10 years
People who can’t explain why clustering keys matter in Snowflake or how Airflow handles retries

Why join us

RI Tech is in the middle of modernising. We’ve built data vaults, now we’re simplifying, decoupling, and rebuilding around data-driven decision-making and composable architecture. You’ll help shape how we integrate data, analytics, and AI across the business - from Oracle to AWS to Snowflake.

About Us

We’re a much-loved brand with an exciting future. Our Islanders are a diverse bunch of bright, talented people who love working together – and are proud of the work they do. Progression here can take you in all kinds of directions. This is what a career at River Island is like. And this is where yours starts.

This role is based at our Head Office in West London. Check us out here on a map.

What we can offer you:

💰 Generous 50% staff discount so you can treat yourself to the latest products, and a bargain staff shop on site!

🛒 Reducing Islanders everyday expenses through discounts, benefits, financial advice, wellbeing solutions and more through the Retail Trust.

🎉 A free onsite gym, subsidised restaurant & café to fill you needs. Various social events to socialise throughout the year.

🤎 Every family is unique, we support Islanders with all different family setups enhanced maternity, paternity, adoption & fertility treatment. We also work closely with the Retail Trust to create dedicated support for all our Islanders!

💻 Flexible working is a given, on top of payday and summer early finish Fridays.

💕 Give as you earn scheme, a ‘Giver Island’ day each year and receive matched funding.

🎓 Support with upskilling through on the job training and qualifications. A succession plan if you want to progress.

💰 A generous bonus scheme & private pension plan.

🩺 The choice to opt in for healthcare through our provider AXA.

☀️ 25 days paid holiday, exclusive of Bank Holidays. With the added option to purchase additional holiday twice a year for whatever the need!

Keeping You Safe

At River Island we are committed to the safeguarding of all of our employees regardless of age or job role. We will fulfil our obligation under the Prevent duty which seeks to stop extremism and extremist views from materialising in our business. We promote and encourage the belief in British Values- including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs. To find out more, please visit www.gov.uk.

Our Island is made up of a diverse community, where we all belong and feel part of something bigger. We are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. We will consider flexible working requests for all roles unless operational requirements prevent otherwise. To find out more about this interview process, check out our hiring process below.

About Us

Keeping You Safe

About River Island