Lead Data Engineer

The roleand your profile

We are seeking aLead Data Engineerto drive technical direction ofdata pipeline and data warehouselayersbringingproductrobustness andmaturity. You are comfortable leading work across evolving platforms and stakeholders: aligning on target patterns, ensuring continuity for users and downstream consumers, and delivering incremental improvements while keeping reliability and quality high.

You can make decisions when multiple potential approaches areidentifiedtaking into accountexisting codebase, reduction of operational overhead, teamstrengthsand business priorities.

You will have the ability to mentor and coach data engineering colleagues to support their weekly responsibilities, ongoing professional development, jobsatisfactionand career potential.

You are a hands-on, self-directed individual who canbring experience in data engineering toidentifyincremental or substantial areas of improvement, leading onimplementationwithbest practices.

You are a professional who is passionate about improving healthcare and having a real impacthavingdeveloped yourself as a data engineer with a software engineering background. You have an appetite to learn and develop yourself, an innate curiosity, and can bring to light clarity around abstract and unclear problems. You feel comfortable working in a self-organizing company.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end design and delivery of the data platform (pipelines + warehouse layers), primarily using Prefect, Python and SQL, supported by fit-for-purpose design artefacts and lineage.

• Drive platform evolution by standardising patterns, reducing operational overhead, and improving maintainability and reliability across the data landscape.

• Ensure continuity and quality during change via release planning, validation strategies, risk management, and clear technical stakeholder communication.

• Partner with Product and Engineering to refine requirements, shape delivery plans, and prioritise backlog/work intake based on value, dependencies, and technical constraints.

• Raise engineering standards through reviews, quality practices, and responsible AI-assisted engineering (e.g., accelerating development and strengthening tests/refactoring under clear controls).

• Collaborate with QA to increase test maturity, coverage, and automation for pipelines and data transformations.

• Collaborate with Application and AI/ML leads to integrate data components with the wider product ecosystem (e.g., search and ML pipelines).

• Lead the data engineering team (line management where applicable), coaching engineers and owning work intake andprioritisation.

Requirements

• Extensive hands-on experience in Python development, with a strong focus on building scalable, maintainable, testable, and production-grade solutions.

• Proven experience designing, developing, and maintaining ETL/ELT data pipelines using modern orchestration frameworks such as Airflow, Prefect, Luigi, or Dagster.
• Experience in dbt (Data Build Tool) for data transformation, data modelling, testing, documentation, and deployment within modern analytics ecosystems.
• Experience working with Databricks, including data engineering workflows, and optimization of large-scale data pipelines.
• Advanced SQL skills with hands-on experience in Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, or other enterprise RDBMS platforms, including both DDL and DML operations.
• Demonstrated experience building and managing cloud-based data platforms, data warehouses, and Lakehouse architectures.
• Experience leading development teams or serving as a senior technical contributor, providing architectural guidance and technical mentorship.
• Ability to make independent architecture and design decisions while balancing scalability, maintainability, performance, and business requirements.
• Strong understanding of data engineering best practices, including data quality, lineage, observability, governance, and performance optimization.
• Proven track record of leveraging automation and AI-assisted development tools to improve engineering productivity, code quality, test coverage, and maintainability in a secure and controlled manner.
• Experience with DevOps practices, including version control, automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code principles.
• Excellent ability to communicate complex technical concepts and business value propositions to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong collaboration skills with experience working in agile teams of four or more developers, providing constructive feedback and embracing technical discussions.
• Excellent interpersonal, presentation, stakeholder management, and problem-solving skills.
• High attention to detail and commitment to delivering high-quality solutions.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills in English.
• Based in Europe, preferably within commuting distance of Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Nice to have

• Knowledge of medical data standards such as FHIRbased data exchangeand/or OMOP

• Exposure to healthcare/life sciences/clinical trials/pharmaceutical data

• MasterDataManagementofideally medicalontologies

• Data lineage

• Dutch language skills are a plus for local collaborationand accessing local data sources

Opportunities

• You will be a part of innovation in the medical field, contributing to improved outcomes for healthcare patients and providers

• You will have the opportunity tobe responsible fortechnical communication and preparation in cross-team projects. This will often mean online collaboration with international colleagues.

• You willcollaborate with Machine Learningspecialistsgaining exposure toML andNatural Language Processing (NLP)

• Medical data is an interesting problem space, both in complexity and in societal value. The texts are a domain of its own with extremely high information density. It gives a real kick when users let us know they were able to collect data they were unable to use previously, such as finding people with a rare disease that might take years otherwise to diagnose or rapidly building quality datasets for COVID research

• You will be part of a larger, cross-functionaland dynamic team consisting of developers, designers, medicalconsultantsandMLengineers.

About us

• Our Data team currently consists of 1 product owner, 5developers.

• The Patient Finder team consists of approximately 30 people organised across three development squads (App, Data,AI/ML), Deployment, Support and Consultancy.

• Patient Finder team is part of a larger healthcare product portfolio across the EMEA region within the IQVIA business.

• Our teamlargely worksfromhomebut employees are free to choose between office, home, or hybrid work locations. Data team typically attend the office weekly.

IQVIA is a leading global provider of clinical research services, commercial insights and healthcare intelligence to the life sciences and healthcare industries. We create intelligent connections to accelerate the development and commercialization of innovative medical treatments to help improve patient outcomes and population health worldwide. Learn more at https://jobs.iqvia.com

IQVIA is committed to integrity in our hiring process and maintains a zero tolerance policy for candidate fraud. All information and credentials submitted in your application must be truthful and complete. Any false statements, misrepresentations, or material omissions during the recruitment process will result in immediate disqualification of your application, or termination of employment if discovered later, in accordance with applicable law. We appreciate your honesty and professionalism.