Lead Data Engineer

Job summary

Discover a career in your hands at HMRC. Whether you're seeking purpose, growth, or a workplace that gives you a true sense of belonging, hear from some of our employees as they share their story about what it’s really like to work at HMRC.

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HMRC is delivering one of the largest and most complex digital transformations in the UK public sector. We provide services to over 45 million individuals and 4.9 million businesses, underpinned by a modern, secure, and scalable data platform.

As a Lead Data Engineer in Data Platform Services (DPS), you will play a critical role in shaping and operating the data platforms that enable analytics, insight, and decision making across HMRC. You will lead engineering activity across large scale data services, ensuring they are reliable, secure, and fit for future demand.

We are committed to building an inclusive environment where everyone can thrive. We offer flexible working patterns and support career development through our Data Academy and Government Digital and Data profession pathways.

Job description

You will lead the engineering and operation of an area within HMRC’s strategic data analytics platforms, ensuring high availability and performance at national scale.

Working across multiple product oriented delivery teams, you will provide technical leadership for data ingestion, transformation, and exploitation services. You will collaborate with engineers, analysts, architects, and business stakeholders to evolve platforms that support advanced analytics, reporting, and data science. You will also led these teams in capability and their technical and strategic direction

This is a hands on leadership role requiring strong technical expertise alongside the ability to lead teams of Data Engineers, influence stakeholders, and drive continuous improvement in a DevOps environment.

A requirement of this role is that candidates either have, or willing to acquire, SC clearance. Please review GOV.uk guidance , if candidates are unable to meet requirements of SC clearance, you maybe be rejected from the process.’

Person specification

Key Responsibilities.

• Lead the operation, support, and continuous improvement of enterprise data platforms and services.
• Provide technical leadership across multiple delivery teams, supporting agile ways of working.
• Expertise and experience in a technical area responsible for delivering outcomes to challenging timescales
• Ensure appropriate security controls and data governance are embedded in platform services.
• Engage with internal users and stakeholders to improve self-service data capabilities.
• Work with suppliers and partners to design, build, and run data services at scale.
• Contribute to out-of-hours support and on-call rotas where required.

Essential Criteria

• Strong experience delivering and operating data platforms at scale, including data ingestion, transformation, and modelling in complex environments.
• Technical expertise in data engineering approaches and technologies, including at least one of the following: • distributed data platforms (e.g. Hadoop), relational or NoSQL databases, and data warehousing and data lake concepts.
• Experience building and maintaining data pipelines using ETL/ELT tooling, with a focus on performance, data quality, and reliability, incorporating virtualization.
• Front end user tooling such as reporting and dashboarding, advanced analytics, machine learning and A.I.
• AWS and Azure Cloud Native products e.g. Glue, Dataflow, Databricks
• Demonstrable leadership experience, including leading engineers or technical teams and guiding delivery in an agile/DevOps environment.
• Ability to apply security, governance, and best practice engineering standards within data platforms.
• Strong stakeholder engagement skills, including supporting business users and translating technical concepts into business outcomes.

Desirable Criteria

• A cloud (AWS/Azure) delivery background.
• Knowledge in the following: EMR, Lambda, S3, RDS, EC2, EBS, EFS, Neptune, VPC (network layer), APIs, Terraform, Cloudwatch, IAM, KMS

Further Location Information

Please ensure that you only apply for a location that you are willing and able to work from, as we will only make one offer of employment. Any additional notes included in a ‘Further Location Preferences (optional)’ field within the application form, will not be considered. Please be aware that you cannot change your location preference after submitting your application.

Office closures

For more information on where you might be working, review this information on our locations .

If your location preference is for one of the following sites, it’s important to note that these are not long-term sites for HMRC and we will require you to move to a new building in the future, subject to our location strategy and the applicable employee policies at that time.

These sites are:

• Telford Plaza, Telford - moving to Parkside Court, Telford
• Trinity Bridge House, Salford - moving to an alternative office in Manchester/ Salford

You will be given more information about what this means at the job offer stage.

Leeds Locations

Moves Adjustment Payment will be available for this role, provided the successful applicant is a current HMRC colleague in Bradford and meets the eligibility requirements outlined in the HMRC’s Moves Adjustment Payment guidance.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Leadership

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £58,541, HM Revenue and Customs contributes

£16,959 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme.

Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

HMRC operates both Flexible and Hybrid Working policies, allowing you to balance your work and personal commitments. We welcome applications from those who need to work a more flexible arrangement and will agree to requests where possible, considering our operational and customer service needs.

We offer a generous leave allowance, starting at 25 days and increasing by a day for every year of qualifying service up to a maximum of 30 days.

• Pension - We make contributions to our colleagues’ Alpha pension equal to at least 28.97% of their salary.
• Family friendly policies.
• Personal support.
• Coaching and development.

To find out more about HMRC benefits and find out what it’s really like to work for HMRC hear from our insiders or visit Thinking of joining the Civil Service

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window) , and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.

How to Apply

As part of the application process, you will be asked to provide the following:

• A name-blind CV including your job history and previous experiences.
• A 500-word personal statement, describing how you meet the Person Specification and Essential Criteria.

Please complete a separate statement (Max 250 words) for the Desirable Criteria where applicable. This is not essential for the role but may be considered by the vacancy-holder where candidates have the same scores at interview.

Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.

Sift

At full sift your CV and your Personal Statement, will be assessed, with the successful candidates being invited to interview.

We may also raise the score required at any stage of the process if we receive a high number of applications.

Interview

During the panel interview, you will be asked a Behaviour-based question to explore in detail what you are capable of as well as Technical questions to assess your expertise in data engineering approaches and technologies, including at least one of the following:

• Distributed data platforms (e.g. Hadoop), relational or NoSQL databases, and data warehousing and data lake concepts.
• Experience building and maintaining data pipelines using ETL/ELT tooling, with a focus on performance, data quality, and reliability, incorporating virtualization.
• Front end user tooling such as reporting and dashboarding, advanced analytics, machine learning and A.I.
• AWS and Azure Cloud Native products e.g. Glue, Dataflow, Databricks

Interviews will take place via video link. Sift and interview dates to be confirmed. Please note that circumstances may arise that require the planned interview format to change. We will endeavour to provide you with as much notice of any change as possible.

Eligibility

Please take extra care to tick the correct boxes in the eligibility sections of your application form . Mistakes sometimes happen but if you contact us later than two working days (Monday-Friday) before the vacancy closes, we may not be able to reopen your application for you. If you do make a mistake with your eligibility form, or have withdrawn yourself in error and need your application reinstated whilst the campaign is still live, please contact us via: unitybusinessservicesrecruitmentresults@hmrc.gov.uk – Use the subject line to insert appropriate wording for example – ‘Please re-open my application – [insert vacancy ref] & vacancy closing date [insert date]’.

To check that you are eligible to apply for this role, please review the eligibility information before submitting your application .

Sponsorship

We have assessed this role against both Home Office and HMRC criteria and we are unable to offer sponsorship for a Skilled Worker Visa. This means the vacancy is not open to applicants who require visa sponsorship.

The HMRC app can help you with your application

The HMRC app can provide you with your past 5 years' employment history, making the process of filling in your application quicker and easier.

If successful in your application, you will need your National Insurance number for the onboarding process.

Download the HMRC app now and save your National Insurance number to your digital phone wallet.

How to download the HMRC app and sign up for an account

Download the free HMRC app from the App Store or Google Play store.

If you have an HMRC online account already, sign straight in using your ID and password. If not, you can prove your identity by answering some questions or providing your photo ID.

You’ll then be able to access the app quickly and easily by signing in using a 6-digit PIN, your fingerprint, or facial recognition.

You can find guidance for technical issues on GOV.UK: Technical support with HMRC online services .

Reserve List

A reserve list may be held for up to 12 months from which further appointments may be made for the same or similar roles – if this applies to you, we’ll let you know via your Civil Service Jobs account.

Merit List

After interview, a single merit list will be created, and you will only be considered for posts in locations you have expressed a preference for. Appointments will be made in strict merit order in line with the set number of roles in each location.

Criminal Record Check

Applications received from candidates with a criminal record are considered fairly in accordance with the DBS Code of Practice and the Recruitment of ex-offenders Policy.

Hybrid working at HMRC

HMRC is an office-based organisation, and