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We’re looking for a Senior Data Engineer to join Apadmi and establish a high-performing data engineering capability for one of our key strategic healthcare accounts. In this senior, hands-on role, you will provide technical leadership across a specialist team of engineers working with cloud-based data infrastructure, business intelligence tooling, and client-facing analytics products. This is the perfect opportunity for someone technically deep who has the patience, credibility, and leadership skills to embed modern engineering discipline into a growing data function. You will sit at the intersection of technology delivery and data engineering, owning the data platform roadmap and governing the quality of all data outputs. Operating as an agile team leader, you will collaborate closely with operational, clinical, and commercial stakeholders to ensure the delivery of trusted, scalable, and beautifully documented data products. You'll be responsible for bringing software engineering rigour to a team expanding its technical maturity, establishing the right ways of working from the outset. As a Senior Data Engineer, you will define and own the data platform architecture while establishing team-wide standards across source control, environment management, peer reviews, and release processes. You will blend high-level strategy with hands-on automation, ensuring data quality checks are built-in from day one. Additionally, you will guide your squad through Agile sprint ceremonies and line-manage engineers to foster a culture of quality. What you'll be working on * Define and own the technical architecture of the cloud data platform, ingestion pipelines, and semantic reporting layer. * Establish and enforce core engineering standards, including Git-based source control, branching strategies, environment management, and peer code reviews. * Design scalable, maintainable data models and pipeline architectures that shift the function from reactive data handling to reusable data products. * Line-manage and mentor a team of three engineers, supporting their professional development in modern engineering discipline through collaborative working. * Drive the adoption of Agile methodologies, including sprint planning, stand-ups, retrospectives, and structured backlog refinement. * Proactively automate recurring workflows, forecasting processes, and ingestion monitoring to reduce manual effort and increase reliability. * Embed strict data quality checks at the point of ingestion and establish data dictionaries to secure strict metric governance before data reaches external audiences. * Translate complex business requirements into deliverable user stories, providing accurate effort estimates and managing technical dependencies. What you’ll bring to the team You are a solution-driven data leader who has spent time working within or alongside structured software development teams. You understand the rigour of technology delivery functions and possess a low tolerance for ambiguous data definitions. You are highly collaborative, capable of managing complex roadmaps, and excel at translating technical trade-offs into clear insights for non-technical stakeholders. * Proven experience in a senior data engineering or tech lead role with direct line management responsibility. * Strong hands-on experience with cloud data platforms, ideally utilizing Azure Data Factory, Azure SQL, or Synapse Analytics. * Demonstrable experience implementing CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, environment management, and Git practices within a data team. * Deep understanding of fact/dimension design, semantic layers, and advanced BI tool development (ideally Power BI and DAX). * Solid coding or scripting experience (ideally Python) used to automate data workflows and solve complex pipeline challenges. * Track record of introducing and sustaining agile delivery practices, backlog management, and iterative delivery metrics. * Exceptional communication skills to engage credibly with senior operational, clinical, and commercial business leaders. * Experience establishing data functions from a low baseline, familiarity with dbt, or experience working within highly regulated data environments like healthcare would be beneficial.

Aker Systems was founded in 2017 by a team of experienced technology professionals who recognised an opportunity to provide highly secure enterprise data platforms to large organisations.  We build and operate ground-breaking, ultra-secure, high performance, cloud-based data infrastructure for the enterprise. Our proprietary technology solutions drive performance and reduce costs while helping our clients to improve the management and sharing of data across their organisations. In 2024, Aker Systems won the Breakthrough Culture Awards highlighting growth companies putting culture first. In 2020 Aker Systems was recognised as a ‘One to Watch’ on the Sunday Times Tech Track.  The Company was also recognised at the Thames Valley Tech Awards 2020; winning the Thames Valley Tech Company of the year, the Emerging Tech Company and High Growth Tech Business categories.  We encourage people of all different backgrounds and identities to apply.  We are committed to maintaining an inclusive, and supportive place for you to do your very best work. DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES A UK Government Security Check (SC) clearance is required for this role. If you don’t hold SC clearance, we will support you to apply assuming you have lived and worked in the UK for a minimum of 5 years. As a Software Engineer, you will help lead the development of backend services for a government client leveraging the latest commercial and open-source technologies. This involves designing, developing, documenting and deploying backend services with a focus on high availability, low latency and scalability.  * Design, develop, document and deploy new or enhanced features to our backend services that meet functional / non-functional business requirements  * Actively participate in the team’s elaboration and estimation of user stories  * Build frequent, small releases to maintain the team’s momentum  * Collaborate closely with other engineers in our cross-functional feature teams; ensuring that others can cover for you, and that you can cover for them  * Build, optimise and operate our Continuous Deployment pipelines  * Maintain operational responsibility for the services that your team owns  CORE COMPETENCIES The successful candidate will have a Bachelor's degree or greater in Computer Science or a related field. An equivalent of at least 5 years of working experience in a developer capacity is also acceptable for this position.  You will have demonstrated the following competencies to the proficiency level appropriate to the seniority of the role; * JAVA programming experience as the core language, including Spring Boot. * Fluent in writing JAVA coding. * Experience with Kafka or a similar platform. * Experience with Scala and Spark. * Integrating with backing services, such as PostgreSQL, Redis or S3 * Good engineering practices including continuous delivery, clean code, documentation, defensive programming, automated testing and code reviews * Working in Agile development and/or DevOps teams * Using GitHub/GitLab for source control * Test Driven Development with appropriate tools and frameworks * Experience in Big Data technologies * Experience in Public Cloud services, such as AWS Aker Systems Attributes At Aker we work as a team; we are collaborative, hardworking, open, and delivery obsessed. There is no blame culture here: try things, and take responsibility for the outcomes. You are always part of the wider Aker. We help our colleagues and take pride in successfully achieving difficult tasks. We run towards problems and help to solve them. Communicate always, do so accurately and in a timely fashion. In return, we offer a competitive salary, 25 days holiday plus bank holidays, company paid medical insurance and life assurance, pension scheme, annual training allowance, wellbeing allowance, virtual GP, Employee Assistance plan and more. Equal Opportunities Aker Systems fosters a diverse environment that encourages openness in its communications and is committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, age, marital status, national origin, citizenship status, disability, veteran status or other personal characteristics. We embrace differences of opinion and diversity because they help challenge us and find new groundbreaking technical solutions.