Senior Data Engineer

Company Description

Depop is a peer-to-peer circular fashion marketplace where anyone can buy, sell and discover secondhand fashion. Our mission is simple: to make fashion circular by making secondhand as exciting and rewarding as buying new.
Founded in 2011, Depop’s diverse community has helped move resale into the mainstream, where buying secondhand is no longer an alternative, but how people of different ages now engage with fashion. Today, more than 56 million registered users come to Depop to find great value, express their own personal style and give clothes a longer life. We believe that everything you want already exists, and our role is to help people discover it.
Powered by a team of over 500 people, our company is headquartered in London, with offices in New York. In 2021, Depop became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Etsy - the global marketplace for unique and creative goods - and continues to operate as a standalone company. For more information, visit www.depop.com
We aim to create an inclusive environment where everyone is welcome, no matter who they are or where they’re from. Just as our platform connects people globally, we believe our workplace should reflect the diversity of the communities we serve. We thrive on the power of different perspectives and experiences, knowing they drive innovation and bring us closer to our users.
We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer, providing employment opportunities without regard to age, ethnicity, religion or belief, gender identity, sex, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy or maternity, marriage and civil partnership, or any other protected status. We’re continuously evolving our recruitment processes to ensure fairness and are open to accommodating any needs you might have. If, due to a disability, you need adjustments to complete the application, please let us know by sending an email with your name, the role to which you would like to apply, and the type of support you need to complete the application to [email protected].

You’ll join the Data Governance Squad to help improve the reliability, trust, and compliance of Depop’s data ecosystem. As a Senior Data Engineer in this team, you’ll lead the design and implementation of frameworks, tools, and processes that strengthen our data foundations, ensuring our data is accurate, observable, and compliant.

Your mission will be to reduce the mean time to detection and resolution of data incidents, by establishing data contracts between producers and consumers, developing robust data observability systems, and embedding governance and data protection compliance principles across the data lifecycle.

You’ll collaborate with product engineering, data platform, analytics, and legal teams to build confidence in data as a product - one that’s reliable, auditable, and actionable.

• Champion and execute the vision for Depop’s data quality, observability, and governance frameworks.

• Establish data contracts between producers and consumers to ensure schema integrity and data reliability.

• Develop and maintain systems that detect, alert, and resolve data quality issues with minimal latency.

• Build automation and tooling to reduce MTTD (Mean Time to Detection) and MTTR (Mean Time to Resolution) for data incidents.

• Partner with data platform engineers to integrate observability at every layer - ingestion, transformation, and consumption.

• Lead GDPR and privacy-by-design initiatives, ensuring compliance and traceability across all datasets.

• Define standards for metadata management, lineage tracking, and access control.

• Collaborate with analytics and product teams to ensure data definitions and quality metrics are consistent across domains.

• Mentor engineers and analysts, fostering a culture of data stewardship and accountability.

• Continuously improve data governance maturity through automation, documentation, and measurable quality KPIs.

• Proven experience as a Senior Data Engineer or in an equivalent technical leadership role in data quality, observability, or governance.

• Deep knowledge of data observability frameworks (Monte Carlo, Soda, or equivalent) and data validation tools (Great Expectations, etc.).

• Deep understanding of Data Products principles and experience applying them to improve data reliability and ownership.

• Experience designing and enforcing data contracts and quality SLAs in distributed data ecosystems.

• Proficiency in Python or Java, and experience building pipelines with Airflow, Spark, or Kafka.

• Strong understanding of data governance principles, privacy regulations (such as the GDPR, CCPA), and secure data handling practices.

• Familiarity with metadata management and data catalog tools (e.g.DataHub, Collibra, etc.).

• Demonstrated success improving data reliability and observability in large-scale data platforms.

• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills; you can bridge technical depth with operational impact.

• Experience implementing automated compliance monitoring or policy-as-code systems.

• Familiarity with real-time anomaly detection for data pipelines.

• Experience contributing to or leading cross-functional data reliability initiatives.

• Prior experience in consumer or marketplace platforms.

• Passion for data as a product -  building reliable, observable, and compliant data systems that teams love to use.

Additional Information

Health + Mental Wellbeing

• PMI and cash plan healthcare access with Bupa

• Subsidised counselling and coaching with Self Space

• Cycle to Work scheme with options from Evans or the Green Commute Initiative

• Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for 24/7 confidential support

• Mental Health First Aiders across the business for support and signposting

Work/Life Balance:

• 25 days annual leave with option to carry over up to 5 days

• 1 company-wide day off per quarter

• Impact hours: Up to 2 days additional paid leave per year for volunteering

• Fully paid 4 week sabbatical after completion of 5 years of consecutive service with Depop, to give you a chance to recharge or do something you love.

• Flexible Working: MyMode hybrid-working model with Flex, Office Based, and Remote options *role dependant

• All offices are dog-friendly

• Ability to work abroad for 4 weeks per year in UK tax treaty countries

Family Life:

• 18 weeks of paid parental leave for full-time regular employees

• IVF leave, shared parental leave, and paid emergency parent/carer leave

Learn + Grow:

• Budgets for conferences, learning subscriptions, and more

• Mentorship and programmes to upskill employees

Your Future:

• Life Insurance (financial compensation of 3x your salary)

• Pension matching up to 6% of qualifying earnings

Depop Extras:

• Employees enjoy free shipping on their Depop sales within the UK.

• Special milestones are celebrated with gifts and rewards!