Azure Head of Data Engineering

Salary- £90,000 - £110,000 + Excellent benefits

Location - Birmingham/Hybrid

Key skills - Azure - Databricks - Data factory - Data Lakes - Synapse - Modelling - Agile

Role purpose:

We are actively seeking a dynamic professional to play a pivotal role in the organisation and contributing to the exciting digital transformation journey. Reporting directly to the Chief Data Officer, you will lead team of skilled data engineers to architect, build, and maintain a new data lakehouse solution and pipelines that drive our digital transformation initiatives and support business reporting requirements.

You will be responsible for overseeing all aspects of data engineering, from strategy to implementing cutting-edge technologies like Microsoft and Databricks and will enjoy being hands-on.

Collaborating with leaders in the business, Analytics, Data Governance, Data Science and AI, you will be instrumental in reshaping our data landscape. This role presents a unique chance to influence cultural change, foster collaboration, and lead the growth of a dedicated team.

Key Responsibilities:

• Define and drive the data engineering strategy and technical roadmap in alignment with the company's digital transformation goals.
• Lead and mentor a team of data engineers to design, develop, and deploy data pipelines and solutions that meet business needs.
• Lead the development of the new solution with a small team, whilst being hands-on.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to understand requirements and translate them into technical solutions.
• Architect and implement data platforms using Microsoft and Databricks technologies to support analytics, AI, machine learning, and other data-driven applications.
• Work with colleagues to establish and enforce best practices for data architecture, data modelling, and data governance.
• Drive innovation by evaluating and implementing new tools, technologies, and processes to improve data engineering efficiency and effectiveness.
• Ensure data governance, security, privacy, and compliance with regulatory requirements in all data engineering activities.
• Create comprehensive documentation for ETL processes, data schemas and ensure documentation is up-to-date and accessible to relevant stakeholders.

Technical / Professional Qualifications / Requirements:

• Significant Microsoft Azure stack experience is a must: Data Lake, Data Factory, Synapse, Databricks, Power BI
• Extensive experience in data engineering and in a leadership or management position.
• Strong in delivering solutions, on time and within budget.
• Hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure services and Databricks for building and managing data solutions at scale.
• Proven track record of leading successful digital transformation initiatives involving data engineering and analytics.
• Strong background in data warehousing, data architecture, data modelling, integration, ETL/ELT processes
• Excellent leadership and communication skills with the ability to inspire and motivate teams.
• Experience working in Agile/Scrum environments
• Experience with DevOps practices and CI/CD pipelines
• Expert in SQL and good experience in Python
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field. Master's degree preferred.

Number of direct reports 5+
Geographic area of impact Global
Size of budget N/a
Key stakeholdersBusiness stakeholders, Analytics, Data Governance & Quality, Data Science, Data Ops