Freelance Data Engineer (AWS / PySpark) - Trading

We are looking for a Data Engineer to join the data platform team of a trading company based in London.

You will work in the same team as a Lead Data Engineer already in place and focus mainly on enhancements of the data platform.

The environment is strongly cloud-oriented (AWS), with Python and PySpark at the core of all data pipelines and processing. You will help keep mission-critical trading and risk data reliable, performant, and available to users across the business.

Key Responsibilities • Monitor and operate existing data pipelines and jobs (Python / PySpark / AWS). • Perform bug fixes, small evolutions, and refactoring on existing codebases. • Work closely with the Lead Data Engineer and business stakeholders to understand issues and prioritize fixes. • Maintain documentation for pipelines, workflows, and operational procedures. • Contribute to the development of new data ingestion and transformation pipelines in Python / PySpark on AWS. • Implement new features and small data products on top of the existing data platform. • Participate in code reviews and help improve engineering best practices (testing, CI/CD, observability).

Required Skills & Experience • Several years of experience as a Data Engineer (or similar role). • Strong hands-on skills in Python for data processing (ETL/ELT, APIs, automation). • Solid experience with PySpark in a production context (batch and/or streaming). • Professional experience on AWS (data-oriented services such as S3, Glue, EMR, Lambda, ECS, Redshift, etc.). • Good knowledge of SQL and relational databases. • Experience operating data pipelines in production: monitoring, alerting, troubleshooting, optimisation. • Comfortable working in remote, international teams, communicating in English (written and spoken).

Nice to Have • Experience in trading, financial markets, or commodities environments. • Knowledge of data orchestration tools (e.g. Airflow, Step Functions) and CI/CD practices. • Familiarity with microservices / APIs (FastAPI or similar) and containerization (Docker). • Exposure to data governance, security, and role-based access control in cloud environments.

Soft Skills • Strong sense of ownership and reliability on production systems. • Pragmatic and solution-oriented, able to work on both small fixes and incremental improvements. • Good communication skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders. • Team player, comfortable pairing with a more senior engineer and following existing architecture and standards.

Practical Information • Location: 100% Remote (European time zones). • Environment: Data platform for trading & risk use cases. • Start date: ASAP. • Contract type: Long-term mission / consulting.