Data Engineer

First Central

12d•Hybrid

About The Position

1st Central is seeking a hands-on Data Engineer to design and build scalable data solutions for projects and long-term products. The role involves developing and implementing data pipelines, designing and maintaining databases, and ensuring solutions follow technical standards and data-platform best practices. The engineer will deliver solutions that support business decisions, insights, data products, reporting, and analytics. The role works with data from on-premise and cloud-based, internal and external sources. It includes building governed pipelines and data models, incorporating data quality and observability, and creating business intelligence solutions. The company primarily works from home, with teams based in Haywards Heath, Salford Quays, and Guernsey. Colleagues typically meet in person once a quarter, with the option to work in the office more often.

Requirements

2–5 years’ experience designing and building end-to-end data solutions.
Engineering and database skills in SQL Server and/or Azure, including Data Factory, Synapse and associated ETL technologies.
Experience working with large, event-based datasets in an enterprise environment.
Experience with testing techniques and tools.
Experience with Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD).
Experience working in an agile environment and self-managing teams.
Excellent communication skills and a desire to build rapport with others.
Good understanding of the full data lifecycle.
Strong problem-solving ability, initiative and an optimistic approach.
Very good time management and organisational skills, including the ability to prioritise multiple demands.
Ability to work collaboratively and focus on shared outcomes.
Ability to support less experienced engineers.
Ability to follow standards and designs and recommend improvements while maintaining high-quality work.

Nice To Haves

Strong experience with PySpark, Python and SQL.
An active interest in data and active external networks.
Ideas for how data can drive business value.
Experience with Power BI or other recognised business intelligence tools.

Responsibilities

Develop secure, governed, high-quality and efficient data pipelines of varying complexity from on-premise and cloud-based internal and external sources.
Cleanse, map, transform and optimise data for storage and business and technical use cases.
Build data observability and data quality into pipelines, including self-testing to identify processing issues or discrepancies.
Build solutions that transform and load data into data lakes, physical database models, reporting structures, data warehouses, business intelligence systems and analytics applications.
Design physical data models to meet business needs, optimise storage and maximise reuse.
Unit test own code and peer test other engineers’ code.
Maintain appropriate documentation to make pipelines and code transparent and understandable.
Follow coding standards, architectural principles, solution designs and release-management processes to deliver safe, high-quality and compliant code.
Coach and mentor Associate Data Engineers.
Create BI solutions of varying complexity, including data marts, semantic layers, reporting and visualisation using recognised tools such as Power BI.