Principal Data Engineer Data Enablement

• Kraków
• Hybrid

Job Description

THE OPPORTUNITY IN A NUTSHELL

You A senior data leader who combines strong technical judgment with the ability to align people unblock teams and turn data strategy into real adoption.

Role Principal Data Engineer Data Enablement. A senior individual contributor role focused on helping product organizations adopt modern data practices improve data product maturity and connect technical execution with business outcomes.

Tech stack Data Mesh Data Operating Model event-driven architecture Kafka CDC schema management data quality observability data catalogs GCP/BigQuery or Snowflake.

Company Vend home of FINN Blocket Tori Oikotie DBA and Bilbasen marketplaces used by millions of people across the Nordics.

Location Kraków hybrid.

Why us You will help scale data maturity across a major marketplace ecosystem. Your impact will come from enabling teams aligning stakeholders removing ambiguity and making sure that data products deliver measurable value - not just technical output.

WHO ARE YOU

You are a senior individual contributor who can operate comfortably across engineering product and leadership conversations.

You bring strong technical foundations in data engineering event-driven architecture cloud data platforms data quality observability schema management and data product lifecycle management. But you also know that technical standards only create value when teams understand them adopt them and sustain them.

You are someone who can:

Build trust with product leaders engineering leaders platform teams data consumers and senior technical stakeholders.
Influence teams without relying on formal authority.
Translate data strategy into practical team-level adoption.
Facilitate decisions when ownership priorities or expectations are unclear.
Coach teams through new standards workflows and data product responsibilities.
Explain complex data topics in a way that is clear pragmatic and business-relevant.
Connect technical decisions to business outcomes such as better product experiences faster insights revenue opportunities operational efficiency and reduced risk.

You are pragmatic. You know when to raise the bar when to sequence change and how to help teams improve without overwhelming them.

WHATS THE JOB LIKE

As a Principal Data Engineer - Data Enablement your mission is to make Vends data strategy work in practice.

You will help product organizations adopt the Data Operating Model understand their responsibilities as data product owners and move from inconsistent data emission toward reliable discoverable and well-maintained data products.

This role is not about personally building every pipeline. It is about creating adoption across many teams.

You will be the person who helps connect:

Company-level data strategy with team-level execution.
Platform capabilities with product team needs.
Technical standards with business outcomes.
Data producers with data consumers.
Leadership expectations with realistic adoption plans.
Ambiguous ownership with clear responsibilities.

Your technical credibility matters but your biggest impact will come from enabling others to succeed.

WHAT YOU WILL WORK ON

Data Operating Model adoption
Help teams understand and implement Vends data operating principles ownership expectations and delivery standards.

Stakeholder alignment
Work with product leaders engineering leaders platform teams data consumers and senior technology stakeholders to clarify responsibilities align priorities and resolve ambiguity.

Team enablement
Coach teams through the full data product journey: from initial event emission and schema design to cataloging quality baselines observability and ongoing lifecycle management.

Adoption planning and maturity improvement
Assess current gaps define practical improvement paths and help teams progress toward higher data product maturity.

Change management
Support the rollout of new standards workflows and practices in a way that teams understand and can realistically sustain.

Business value realization
Ensure that data product work is connected to real outcomes: faster decision-making better product experiences improved experimentation revenue opportunities operational efficiency or reduced data risk.

Cross-team coordination
Identify dependencies between product teams data consumers and platform capabilities. Escalate blockers early and help teams converge on decisions.

YOUR TYPICAL WEEK

You might start the week meeting with product and engineering leaders to review progress against data product adoption goals clarify blockers and agree where enablement is most needed.

Later you could run a workshop with a product team that is publishing its first data product helping them understand ownership consumer expectations schema responsibilities and lifecycle management.

You may meet with platform teams to discuss friction in the golden path work with peer data leaders to keep standards consistent or prepare a clear progress narrative for senior stakeholders.

You might also coach teams through difficult moments: a breaking schema change unclear ownership poor documentation missing quality baselines or disagreement between producers and consumers.

COLLABORATION & STAKEHOLDERS

You will work across multiple levels of the organization: product teams engineering teams product managers engineering managers CTO-level leaders data consumers central platform teams and peer data leaders.

You will be expected to influence without direct authority. Success in this role depends on your ability to build trust create clarity make adoption feel achievable and help teams move from strategy to execution.

You will not be a gatekeeper. You will be an enabler someone who helps teams understand what good looks like why it matters and how to get there.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

After 6 months
You have built trusted relationships with key stakeholders mapped adoption gaps helped teams understand their data product ownership responsibilities and established clear enablement plans for priority areas.

After 1 year
Teams across your area are more confident and self-sufficient in creating and maintaining data products. Stakeholders have better visibility into progress. Adoption blockers are actively managed. Data products are not only being published but are delivering measurable value for consumers and the business.

WHAT THIS ROLE IS NOT

This is not a people management role. You will lead through influence facilitation coaching technical credibility and stakeholder trust.

This is not a platform operations role. You will not own the underlying infrastructure although you will work closely with platform teams to improve adoption and usability.

This is not a role for someone who wants to work only in deep technical isolation. You will spend significant time with people: aligning coaching facilitating unblocking and helping teams move forward.

This is not a governance-only role. Your focus is practical enablement helping teams adopt standards in a way that improves delivery and business outcomes.