Lead Data Engineer

Lead Data Engineer

Department: Technology

Employment Type: Permanent

Location: Any UK Office Hub (Bristol / London / Manchester / Swansea)

Compensation: £80,000 - £96,000 / year

Description

As a Lead Data Engineer or architect at Made Tech, you'll play a pivotal role in helping public sector organisations become truly data-lead by equipping them with robust data platforms. You'll also join a data team on its mission to get data knowledge and skills out of silos and embedded into delivery teams.

Combining cloud engineering knowledge with a collaborative approach, you will work closely with stakeholders to cut through technical complexity, helping translate ambiguous user needs into clear, scalable, and effective data solutions.

You will take a lead role in multidisciplinary delivery teams to design and implement efficient, secure, and maintainable data storage and pipeline solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Define, shape, and implement cloud-native data strategies, and security-first engineering.

• Empower public sector teams to unlock the strategic value of their data by designing scalable, high-impact data solutions..

• Establish yourself as a trusted advisor in data driven approaches using public cloud services like AWS, Azure and GCP.

• As employee growth is a huge focus here at Made Tech, we would expect you to contribute to our recruitment efforts and encourage you to take on line management responsibilities.

• In some cases, you will work within the larger MadeTech team to identify growth opportunities within the account.

• Contribute to our practice by sharing knowledge, coordinating presentations and representing the capability internally and externally

Skills, Knowledge & Expertise

We hire for a range of skills and experience so please apply even if you don’t meet all the criteria as if unsuccessful we can provide you with feedback.

We are looking for a Data Engineer who can demonstrate playing a key role in delivering a production ready data platform on one or more occasions.

Engineering and Data Engineering

• Proficiency in Python

• Proficiency in cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or GCP

• The capacity to build and manage large-scale data transformation workflows

• Proficiency in managing PII and sensitive information while ensuring compliance with data legislation.

• Champion a Test-Driven Development (TDD) approach and share experience in implementing testing strategies including unit, integration, and data quality assessments

• An understanding of fundamental software principles, particularly SOLID and DRY

• Experience with version control systems such as GitHub or Bitbucket

• Knowledge of contemporary data architectures, including Data Lakes, Data Warehouses, and Data Lakehouses

• The ability to organize and transform diverse data types into standardized, unified schemas

• Good understanding of serverless, code-driven data transformation pipelines as well as traditional batch-oriented ETL systems.

Technologies

While mastery of everything is not required, we are seeking Engineers who possess hands‑on experience with one or more of the following technological areas (or their equivalent cloud‑native alternatives):

• Analytics & Platform Frameworks like Apache Spark or similar cloud-specific services.

• Transformation & Orchestration tools

• Database Technologies

• Libraries & Schema Management

• Storage Formats: Familiarity managing diverse data types through formats like JSON and Parquet

• Containerisation

DevOps and DataOps

We are interested in Engineers with a solid understanding of DevOps to enable ownership of cloud infrastructure and different environments including:

• Experience of deploying Data platforms and pipelines

• Strong experience in IaC, preferably Terraform

• Experience in establishing CI/CD pipelines to ensure code excellence and support rapid, iterative releases

• Experience of implementing logging, monitoring and checks for vulnerabilities

• The ability to accurately talk about cost estimates when designing, deploying, and managing services

Consultancy Skills

• Experience and aptitude for interpreting the business and data landscape to guide Delivery and Product managers, ensuring project success by recognising client requirements, alongside other disciplines (e.g., Business Analysts, User Researchers).

• Skilled at discussing DataOps utilities across orchestration, analytics, and data integration.

• Proven track record in agile delivery environments, with the ability to work in teams that function in Kanban, XP, or Scrum frameworks.

• Ability to foster organic account growth through a commercial mindset and engagement with senior stakeholders.

• Ability and desire to work in cross functional teams

• A desire to upskill and share knowledge with a team and within the organisation

• Mentoring, managing and developing talent within the organisation

Desirable experience

Experience in the following things isn’t essential, but it’s highly desirable!

• Collaborating within multidisciplinary digital and technology teams encouraging practices like Pair programming

• Experience with specialised Data Platforms focused on specific domains like Financial or Geospatial data

• Operating within the public sector, including the facilitation of data sharing and utilisation across various government departments

• Partnering with data scientists to transition advanced data deliverables, such as machine learning models, into production environments

An increasing number of our customers are specifying a minimum of SC (security check) clearance in order to work on their projects. As a result, we're looking for all successful candidates for this role to have eligibility. Eligibility for SC requires 5 years' continuous UK residency and 5 year' employment history (or back to full-time education). Ideally, no more than 30 consecutive days spent outside the UK within the last five years. Please note that if at any point during the interview process it is apparent that you may not be eligible for SC, we won't be able to progress your application and we will contact you to let you know why.

Support in applying

If you need this job description in another format, or other support in applying, please email talent@madetech.com.

We believe we can use tech to make public services better. We also believe this can happen best when our own team represents the society that actually uses the services we work on. We’re collectively continuing to grow a culture that is happy, healthy, safe and inspiring for people of all backgrounds and experiences, so we encourage people from underrepresented groups to apply for roles with us.

When you apply, we’ll put you in touch with a talent partner who can help with any needs or adjustments we may need to make to help with your application. This includes alternative formats for documents, the time allotted for interviews and any other needs. We also welcome any feedback on how we can improve the experience for future candidates.

Job Benefits

Life at Made Tech

We’re committed to building a happy, inclusive and diverse workforce. You can get a sense of what it’s like working here from our blog, where we talk about mental health, communities of practice and neurodiversity (as well as our client work and best practice).

Like many organisations, we use Slack to foster a sense of community and connection. As well as special interest groups such as music, food and pets, we also have 10+ Slack channels dedicated to specific communities, allies, and identities as well as dedicated learning spaces called communities of practice (COPs). If you’d like to speak to someone from one of these groups about their experience as an employee, please do let a member of the Made Tech talent team know.

We are always listening to our growing teams and evolving the benefits available to our people. As we scale, as do our benefits and we are scaling quickly. We've recently introduced a flexible benefit platform which includes a Smart Tech scheme, Cycle to work scheme, and an individual benefits allowance which you can invest in a Health care cash plan or Pension plan. We’re also big on connection and have an optional social and wellbeing calendar of events for all employees to join should they choose to.

Here are some of our most popular benefits listed below:

• 30 days Holiday - we offer 30 days of paid annual leave

• Flexible Parental Leave - we offer flexible parental leave options

• Remote Working - we offer part time remote working for all our staff

• Paid counselling - we offer paid counselling as well as financial and legal advice.

• Pension - 7% employer matched

An increasing number of our customers are specifying a minimum of SC (security check) clearance in order to work on their projects. As a result, we're looking for all successful candidates for this role to have eligibility. Eligibility for SC requires 5 years' UK residency and 5 year' employment history (or back to full-time education). Ideally, no more than 30 consecutive days spent outside the UK within the last five years. Please note that if at any point during the interview process it is apparent that you may not be eligible for SC, we won't be able to progress your application and we will contact you to let you know why.