Data Engineer

Positive Employment is currently recruiting for a Data Engineer for our client a government organisation in West Berkshire. The successful post holder will display strong system integration capabilities to ensure that data flows between systems are aligned, reliable, and continuously improved. Responsibilities will include implementing platform enhancements, managing operational processes, and delivering system and database customisations—covering SQL Server, QTC/Unit4 environments, and system‑to‑system migration assessments.

The post ensures that data remains trusted, secure, well‑structured, and readily available to support analytics, reporting, and digital services. This role is a temporary contract initially for 3 months with the possibility to extend. This role is hybrid working with 2 days per week in the office required.

• Build and maintain batch and streaming data pipelines
• Implement reliability practices (observability, SLAs/SLOs, testing, data contracts).
• Optimise storage and compute performance.
• Deploy pipelines using CI/CD and IaC.
• Deliver curated datasets and semantic layers for BI, analytics, and ML.
• Support ML feature engineering and model delivery.
• Define scalable data architecture patterns and integration designs (ingestion, storage, transformation, analytics).
• Develop and maintain conceptual, logical, and physical data models.
• Ensure secure, efficient, and compliant dataflows across SaaS, cloud, and on‑prem systems.
• Embed data governance foundations (quality, lineage, cataloguing, metadata, retention.
• Identify and manage data‑related risks, ensuring privacy‑by‑design and regulatory compliance.
• Establish access controls, classification rules, and protective security measures.
• Provide architectural guidance and review for pipelines, APIs, and system‑to‑system integrations.
• Assess and recommend platforms, tools, and technologies that support scalability and strategic needs.

• 3–5+ years’ experience with Microsoft SQL Server (2016+) and SSIS in production environments.
• Strong SQL Server engineering: advanced T‑SQL, indexing, performance tuning, execution plans, statistics, partitioning, tempdb optimisation.
• Proven experience with ETL/ELT development and design patterns (incremental loads, CDC, SCD, error handling, idempotency).
• Strong data modelling skills (Kimball, dimensional, relational). [Data Engineer JD | Word].
• Proficiency with SQL Server Agent, SSIS logging, SSISDB deployment, and orchestration workflows.
• Knowledge of data governance, metadata, cataloguing, and lineage principles.
• Experience with cloud data services (Azure SQL/Managed Instance, Azure Data Factory/Synapse Pipelines, modernising SSIS workloads to ADF/SSIS IR). (Desirable).
• Automation and scripting skills (Power Shell or Python).
• Experience supporting Power BI, semantic models, or SSAS Tabular (Desirable).
• Familiarity with SQL monitoring and observability tools (Redgate, Sentry One, custom telemetry). (Desirable).
• Experience with metadata management or data catalogue tools. (Desirable).

Working Hours:

37hrs / 9:00am - 17:00pm / Mon–Fri

Pay: £350.00 per day

Pleasenotethisroleiswithin scope of IR35.