Overview

Delivery Manager helping organisations obtain top tech talent

Own the Data Function in a High-Growth Behavioural AI Startup

Manchester / Hybrid

The Company

Our client is an ambitious AI startup poised for a significant funding round and entering an exciting phase of global expansion.

The platform is redefining AI and authentication by harnessing biometric signals, from touch patterns and device sensors to behavioural usage data, to deliver seamless, next-generation security. By combining biometric interactions with advanced AI, they create distinctive user profiles that make security both effortless and resilient.

(If you have experience with biometric, sensor-based, or time-series data, we’d love to hear from you!)

This is an opportunity to join right before the company expands globally, at the very moment it transitions from startup to global scale.

The Opportunity

We are seeking a Senior Data Engineer to join at this pivotal moment. For the right person, this is a career-defining role where you will:

• Own the data function end-to-end – designing pipelines, systems, and infrastructure from scratch.
• Build scalable, real-time ML pipelines that fuel behavioural authentication models.
• Shape and curate the company’s entire data strategy, creating the foundations for both product and innovation teams.
• Support the AI function directly – bringing together multiple datasets to power large behavioural models (LBM) and enhance authentication products.
• Grow into leadership – with a clear path to become Head of Data as the business scales.

This isn’t about maintaining existing systems. You’ll be architecting the data backbone of the business.

What You’ll Do

• Data Pipelines: Build scalable ETL/ELT pipelines for behavioural, biometric, and sensor data.
• AI/ML Support: Develop feature stores, standardised datasets, and experimentation frameworks to accelerate model development.
• Architecture & Governance: Design modern cloud-native data lakes/warehouses with strong governance, privacy, and compliance measures.
• Collaboration: Partner closely with AI engineers, product managers, and leadership to align data with business and technical goals.

What You Bring

• Solid data engineering experience with strong foundations in Python, SQL, and the modern data stack (dbt, Airflow, Kafka, etc.).
• Experience with real-time streaming, time-series data, and behaviour/sensor datasets.
• Proven knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and data warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift).
• Familiarity with MLOps, data versioning, and reproducibility for AI models.
• A systems-thinking mindset with the ambition to grow into a leadership role.
• Thrive in a fast-paced, scaling startup environment.

Why Join?

• Greenfield ownership – design the data function from the ground up.
• Leadership trajectory – clear path to become Head of Data as the company scales.
• Impact at scale – your work will directly power authentication products used.
• Cutting-edge AI – work on biometric and behavioural data for next-gen security.
• This is more than a job; it’s a chance to define the data backbone of a company that’s changing the future of authentication and a whole new field of AI technology.

Seniority level

• Mid-Senior level

Employment type

• Full-time

Job function

• Information Technology
• Industries: Technology, Information and Media

Note: Referrals increase your chances of interviewing at 55 Exec Search.