Lead Data Engineer - Department Transport - G7

Lead Data Engineer - Department for Transport - G7

£57,515 - £80,400 Plus an additional DDaT allowance up to: £22,885
Published on

Full-time (Permanent) £57,515 - £80,400 Plus an additional DDaT allowance up to: £22,885
Published on 22 January 2026

Birmingham, Hastings, Leeds, Swansea

Can you lead secure, production-grade data pipelines on GCP while balancing live operations and innovation?

Do you enjoy mentoring engineers and translating complex data engineering concepts for diverse stakeholders?

If so, we'd love to hear from you!

In recent years DfT’s digital and data teams have implemented a range of advanced data services, making use of the latest cloud technologies to deliver the services and platforms that our users need, with excellent customer satisfaction rates. We are proud of our ability develop and grow as a team, and we look forward to you sharing that sense of pride!

At DfT, we recognise that everyone has different needs and aspirations. We have created an inclusive and welcoming working environment so you can feel comfortable to be yourself ’ll help you to reach your full potential, offering rewarding opportunities alongside access to the latest training and technologies.

Joining our department comes with many benefits, including:

• Employer pension contribution of 28.97% of your salary. Read more about Civil Service Pensions here
• 25 days annual leave, increasing by 1 day each year of service (up to a maximum of 30 days annual leave), plus 8 bank holidays a privilege day for the King’s birthday
• Flexible working options where we encourage a great work-life balance.

Read more in the Benefits section below!

Working as part of a talented and collaborative team, you will:

• Lead the build and operation of DfT’s production‑grade data pipelines and platforms, ensuring reliability and security across our Google Cloud Platform environment.
• Own and manage live data services, triaging and resolving issues at pace to maintain high‑quality data delivery for analysts, policy teams and external commitments.
• Drive innovation within data engineering, identifying opportunities to modernise tooling, adopt emerging GCP capabilities and introduce new approaches that improve efficiency and data quality.
• Plan delivery across legacy migration, operational support and new development, ensuring that resources are allocated effectively and that risks, dependencies and priorities are well managed.
• Work closely with technical and non-technical stakeholders, translating technical concepts, shaping data‑related decisions, and responding to business need.
• Line manage and develop engineers at varying levels, providing technical guidance, coaching and oversight, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement, collaboration and knowledge‑
  Drive adoption of Infrastructure as Code (IaC), establishing repeatable patterns for environments, access, and data services.
• Lead the development of our metadata catalogue, curating business and technical metadata so users can effectively discover and use data.

In return, we can offer you:

• access to new and emerging technologies,
• varied projects developed in a cloud-first environment,
• support and investment to further your training and development,
• flexible and hybrid working supporting a healthy work-life balance,
• industry-leading pension and employee benefits package.

For further information on the role, please read the role profile. Please note that the role profile is for information purposes only - whilst all elements are relevant to the role, they may not all be assessed during the recruitment process. This job advert will detail exactly what will be assessed during the recruitment process.

At the heart of data innovation and evolution in DfT, you will join a talented, experienced, data engineering team imagining and shaping the delivery of the next wave of data services. The team is embedded within the wider data directorate, and works alongside analysts, data scientists, architects and other engineers to deliver some of the most impactful data projects within DfT.

You will support and shape various areas within the business which…