Data Engineering Leader|Data & Product|

We are on the journey to transform our digital capabilities, bringing core business processes, people, data & technology together - an enabler for IKEA to become an even better home furnishing retailer in the future. A journey that needs passionate people who embrace change, dare to question and want to make a difference. If that sounds like you, come and join us. Together we can do great things!    

Inter IKEA Group is organized into three core businesses - Range, Supply and Retail Concept - and five enabling functions. Together we contribute to the success of IKEA and share responsibility for the franchise offer.  

The enabling functions are responsible for leading key common activities in networks across Inter IKEA Group, as well as covering specific needs for the core businesses. The five Enabling functions are Operations Management, Business Performance & Support, Communication, Sustainability and People & Culture.   

Operations Management leads and holds together the development and maintenance of a common foundation for how we work together across the value chain, our operating model. We enable strategic movements towards the IKEA goals through the strategic landscape and work closely with all parts of the value chain to achieve them. It includes teams for business insights, capability and process development, strategy and roadmap, data and product, and technology.  

We have chosen to organize our work in a data and product paradigm where we are building empowered teams that have the privilege to take responsibility while being supported by servant leaders.   

As part of this role you will:

Data Engineering Enablement 

• Drive continuous improvement, collaboration, and knowledge sharing across the IKEA Data Engineering community. 
• Establish and maintain paved roads, reference architectures, patterns, and reusable components that enable teams to build data products efficiently and consistently. 

Technical & Community Leadership (No Line Management) 

• Act as a senior individual contributor and role model for data engineering excellence across the organisation. 
• Provide technical guidance, coaching, and mentorship to data engineers across teams, without formal people‑management responsibility. 
• Facilitate communities of practice, guilds, or forums to align engineers to standards, tooling, and ways of working. 

Standards, Quality, Privacy and Security 

• Define and promote data engineering standards and best practices, covering ingestion, transformation, testing, observability, and lifecycle management. 
• Ensure that data privacy and data security principles are embedded into data engineering patterns by design (e.g. access control, data minimization, protection of sensitive data). 
• Support compliance with relevant privacy and security requirements by enabling teams with secure, compliant default patterns rather than ad hoc solutions. 

Data Asset & Lifecycle Enablement 

• Support domain teams in establishing reusable, wellgoverned data assets that maximise connected value. 
• Promote responsible data handling through clear ownership, documentation, and lifecycle practices, ensuring secure use and correct handling of sensitive data throughout its lifecycle. 

Platform & Architecture Collaboration 

• Work closely with platform leaders, platform engineers, architects and security stakeholders to ensure that privacy and security requirements are reflected in platforms, tooling and paved roads. 
• Translate privacy and security constraints into practical, developer-friendly guidance for data engineers. 
• Help ensure alignment between data engineering practices and IKEA’s broader data architecture principles. 

Domain & Stakeholder Enablement 

• Collaborate with domain teams and stakeholders to understand needs and advise on scalable, practical data engineering solutions. 
• Enable teams to make informed tradeoffs through guidance, patterns, and architectural support, without becoming a central delivery function. 

Insights Access & DataDriven Culture 

• Facilitate easy access to trusted data engineering insights, standards, and recommendations across IKEA. 
• Support a culture of datadriven decision making by enabling reliable, wellstructured, and accessible data pipelines. 

Technology Horizon & Continuous Improvement 

• Stay up to date with data engineering trends, tools, and practices, assessing their relevance at IKEA scale. 
• Drive pragmatic improvements that balance innovation, stability, and longterm maintainability. 

To be successful in this role you will have:

• Demonstrable experience as a Senior  Data engineer in large, complex organisations. 
• Strong expertise in modern data platforms and architectures.
• Proven ability to lead through influence as a senior individual contributor. 
• Experience defining and scaling standards, patterns, and best practices, including data privacy and data security by design. 
• Strong communicator who enjoys enabling and coaching other teams. 

This is a permanent position based in Malmö, We are actively conducting ongoing interviews, so we encourage you to submit your application without hesitation. For any questions about the recruitment process, you can directly connect with [email protected]

Applications closing date for this role will be 2nd March 2026 

At IKEA, we are looking for people who believe everyone deserves a seat at the table. You’re welcome no matter where you come from, what you believe, and what you look like. We don’t even care how you have furnished your home. We’re interested in you simply because you’re you. Even if your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. We believe that people’s different perspectives, backgrounds, and personalities make us better at understanding our customers dreams and needs. At IKEA, we’re all on the same project.  

  

If you have a special need that requires accommodation in the recruitment process, just let us know.