Contractor - Senior Data Engineer (3 months +)

About the Role

We’re looking for a Senior Data Engineer (contract) to join our expanding data team. Your mission? Helping us smash our roadmap targets and giving our data platform the TLC it deserves.

You must be ready to hit the ground running. We’re ideally looking for data engineers with AWS and SnowPro certification, plus hands-on dbt experience in production. Your current stack must be AWS-focused. GCP is a nice bonus, but pure Azure won’t cut it here.

You’ll be tasked with overhauling our Snowflake warehouse for peak performance (materialisation, dynamic tables, clustering), building ingestion and ETL/ELT pipelines via DMS/Fivetran, and developing modelling layers in dbt using medallion architecture.

Arena Entertainment runs several iGaming and casino brands. The main focus for this role is on Metawin and HIT, which both have a heavy crypto lean. At Arena, AI is a must-have tool, not a nice-to-have. We expect you to use Claude, Copilot, and other AI assistants to code faster, automate the boring stuff, and work smarter.

About you

You are ready to hit the ground running on a contract basis, and possess full right to work in the UK without sponsorship.

You thrive in fast-paced environments and have our specific tech stack under your belt, ready to go.

You have a background in fast-moving sectors like iGaming, Crypto, or FinTech.

You’re a team player. We need you to jam with our data science crew and other departments. You’re happy to jump in and help colleagues with reporting or analytics when they’re swamped.

You believe documentation is non-negotiable. As we scale across multiple brands, clear docs are vital to keep our platform tidy, transparent, and sustainable.

You’re a great communicator. You can talk shop with techies and keep things simple for non-tech stakeholders. If you hit a blocker, you let us know rather than suffering in silence.

Our tech stack

Cloud Platform: AWS (S3, Lambda, DMS, Cloudwatch), GCP (Postgres)

Data Warehousing: Snowflake, Postgres, Aurora

Transformation & Modeling: dbt (Core/Cloud), SQL, Python

Orchestration: Airflow, Dagster

Data Ingestion (ETL/CDC): Fivetran, DMS, Debezium

Streaming & Real-time: Kafka, Kinesis

Infrastructure & DevOps: Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes/Helm, ArgoCD, GitHub Actions

Data Visualization (BI): Quicksight, PowerBI

AI & Productivity: GitHub Copilot, Claude, Gemini

Key Responsibilities

Manage and optimise Snowflake data warehouses.

Build scalable ETL/ELT pipelines (using dbt, Airflow, Fivetran, DMS).

Transform raw data into clean, usable models using dbt (and AI for docs/tests).

Integrate different data sources (CRM, payments, games, etc.).

Own initiatives for data quality improvement and monitoring (e.g. anomaly detection, automated alerts).

Keep an eye on performance, cost, and security of the data platform.

Work closely with cross-functional teams to bridge product development, data, and operations.

Help us move to real-time data ingestion & ETL using tools like DMS, Kafka, or Kinesis.

Help mentor the other engineers and contribute to the team's AI strategy.

Must haves

7+ years in Data Engineering.

Solid hands-on experience with AWS.

You really know ELT design and data warehousing best practices.

You're an expert in optimising Snowflake.

You're a dbt pro (macros, testing, modularisation).

Excellent SQL and Python skills.

Good CI/CD and Git skills.

You have used AI coding assistants to work efficiently.

Nice to haves

Experience building pipeline to handle high-volume data.

Know the iGaming lingo (GGR, LTV, RTP, acquisition KPIs).

Experience with affiliate or game provider data feeds.

Familiarity with real-time data ingestion.

Exposure to data science/ML pipelines (SageMaker, Bedrock).

Used AI tools for monitoring or query optimisation before.

QuickSight experience (especially SPICE/Direct Query).