$180k + Super + Bonus | Fintech Scale Up | Sydney | 5 Days On Site
This is an opportunity to step into a business at exactly the right moment.
A well established fintech, commercially strong and scaling fast, is entering a major phase of transformation, and data and AI sit right at the centre of it.
They are investing heavily in a modern data platform with a clear ambition to build a trusted, scalable, AI ready data foundation that will power the next 3 to 5 years of growth and unlock real AI capability across the business.
They are now looking for a Senior Data Engineer who wants more than just pipeline work, someone who wants to shape, influence, and ultimately step into architecture while helping enable AI at scale.
🧠 The Role
You will join a complex, high volume data environment with multiple source systems and real world challenges to solve.
The foundations are there, but there is a genuine opportunity to improve structure, consistency, and trust across the platform so that AI initiatives actually deliver value rather than noise.
The business is leaning heavily into AI integration across multiple areas, but success depends entirely on the quality, structure, and reliability of the underlying data.
You will be hands on building and optimising pipelines, while also contributing to how the future AI ready data platform is designed.
Over time, this role naturally evolves into Data Architect territory.
🎯 Core Mandate
- Build, optimise, and own scalable data pipelines across multiple systems
- Improve data quality, consistency, and trust across the business
- Bring structure to fragmented data across trading, payments, and operational platforms
- Contribute to data modelling and platform design decisions with AI readiness in mind
- Help shape a data foundation designed for downstream AI and ML consumption as a first class requirement
- Enable reliable, governed data flows that support real AI use cases across the business
- Work closely with stakeholders to translate complex problems into clean, usable data solutions
⚙️ Tech Environment
- ✅ Modern cloud data platforms, Snowflake experience highly desirable
- ✅ ELT pipelines, transformation layers, orchestration tools
- ✅ High volume, multi source data environments
- ✅ Financial data across trading systems, payments, and operational platforms
- ✅ Increasing focus on AI and ML driven use cases across the platform
Specific tooling experience is valued but not a hard gate. Strong engineers coming from BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks or similar environments will be considered.
✅ Must Haves
- Strong experience as a Senior Data Engineer in complex production environments
- Proven ability to build and scale data pipelines across multiple systems
- Solid understanding of data modelling and system design principles
- Experience enabling data platforms that can support analytics and AI use cases
- Experience operating in fast paced, evolving businesses
- Ability to balance hands on delivery with forward thinking design
🌟 Nice to Have
- Experience with streaming or real time data processing
- Exposure to building data platforms that support AI and ML use cases, including governance, PII handling, and data classification
- Experience working in a scaling business going through transformation
- Snowflake experience
- Exposure to data environments where AI is actively being deployed into production workflows
🚫 What to Avoid
Candidates who know the tooling but not the industry. Financial context is non negotiable.
🧬 The Archetype
You are pragmatic, solutions focused, and low ego.
You do not just highlight problems, you think them through and come back with options.
You are smart, articulate, and commercially aware. You understand that data exists to support real business outcomes, and increasingly, to enable meaningful AI outcomes.
You have likely worked in financial services, fintech, trading, payments, or another high volume transactional environment at some point, and that experience shows.
Industry knowledge and financial data instinct matters more than specific tooling. Someone who understands trading workflows, margin calculations, multi currency reconciliation, and regulatory reporting will ramp faster than someone learning the domain from scratch. The tools can be learned, the context cannot.
You know who you are.
📍 Location
Sydney, 5 days a week on site, embedded in the business.
💬 Why This Role
This is a genuine opportunity to make an impact right now. The business is ready, the investment is there, and the need is real.
You will not just be building pipelines, you will be helping lay the foundations that allow AI to actually work at scale.
If you have been looking for a role where you can move beyond execution and start shaping how data and AI platforms should be built, this is it.
⚠️ A Quick Reality Check
This is a fast moving, evolving environment. If you are most comfortable in highly structured, slow moving organisations with layers of process and long decision cycles, this may not be the right fit.
If you thrive in complexity, enjoy solving real problems, and like being close to the action, you will do very well here.
🌊 About Us
Big Wave Digital has been around for over 16 years, and all principal consultants bring 20 plus years of tech and digital recruitment experience. We focus on quality over quantity, always.
If you are looking to make a move, or looking to hire someone exceptional, you know where to go 🌊