Length of employment: Job Summary: This role requires you to pass Security Check clearance. For further information, please see 'Selection process details'. DWP is the UK's largest government department. We help people into work and make payments worth £195bn a year to support the most vulnerable people in our society. DWP have big ambitions to become a data driven organisation through delivery of our data strategy. This is a key role leading our data engineering delivery in our Data & Analytic data platform and operations team. You will be responsible for providing technical direction for data engineering across our Business Audit platform, ensuring we provide reliable, trusted, interoperable data to meet our user needs across DWP, in other government departments. This includes providing technical patterns and guidance, building our data engineering capability and ensuring our data products and pipelines are built using the right techniques in how we ingest, prepare (through ETL processing), store and use data using the most appropriate method e.g. balancing low-code and cloud native loosely coupled components. Job Description: As Senior Data Engineer you will: Be responsible for leading the Business Audit team in collecting upstream user technical requirements that need to be implemented as part of platform migrations and configuration. Have responsibility for data engineers within the Business Audit team and will provide direction for data engineering across the team. Work closely with teams across digital group and wider Data & Analytics, including our data practice, to ensure we adopt consistent approaches and provide continuous development for our data engineers. Provide data engineering guidance and direction to the Audit team who work in multi-disciplined agile teams. Provide the vision and strategic direction for Audit data engineering, ensuring initiatives are aligned to organisation strategy and objectives. Leading the Audit team though large-scale data and platform transformation and/or migration programmes, ensuring best practice and building capability within the team as the transformation occurs. Set direction of change and proactively identify key issues. Delivering migration to modern data platforms including Data Warehouse, Lakehouse, and implementing cross-government/industry Hub and Spoke architecture patterns. Lead the redevelopment of existing data journeys, providing leadership to improve, performance, resilience, or to account for system, tooling or platform change on code frameworks and practices. Provide hands-on leadership to drive successful outcomes while mentoring team members. Provide technical leadership, setting engineering team and community direction to ensure the products that are developed conform to data standards and strategic principals Own and lead the redesign of existing SAS ETL data pipelines, for example to improve performance, resilience, or to account for system or platform change. Disseminate knowledge and best practice to wider team and Platform and Operations. Champion data engineering ETL coding standards across Platform and Operations, ensuring consistent best coding practice and developments are brought into engineering teams and common codes standards factor into ETL pipelines. Provide expert review and scrutinise the coding approach of other data engineers to advise on good practice, including optimisation of performance and to ensure reliability across a variety of toolsets used in cloud, distributed, and on-prem platforms. We also have a broad benefits package built around your work-life balance which includes: Working patterns to support work/life balance such as job sharing, term-time working, flexi-time and compressed hours. Generous annual leave - at least 25 days on entry, increasing up to 30 days over time (pro-rata for part time employees), plus 9 days public and privilege leave. Support for financial wellbeing, including interest-free season ticket loans for travel, a cycle to work scheme and an employee discount scheme. Health and wellbeing support including our Employee Assistance Programme for specialist advice and counselling and the opportunity to join HASSRA a first-class programme of competitions, activities and benefits for its members (subscription payable monthly). Family friendly policies including enhanced maternity and shared parental leave pay after 1 year's continuous service. Funded learning and development to support progress in your role and career. This includes industry recognised qualifications and accreditations, coaching, mentoring and talent development programmes. An inclusive and diverse environment with opportunities to join professional and interpersonal networks including Women's Network, National Race Network, National Disability Network (THRIVE) and many more. This job role may be suitable for hybrid working, which is where an employee works part of the week in their DWP office and part of the week from home. This is a voluntary, non-contractual arrangement and your office will be your contractual place of work. The number of days that anyone will be able to work at home will be determined primarily by business need but personal circumstances and other relevant circumstances will also be taken into account. If you are successful, any opportunities for hybrid working, including whether a hybrid working arrangement is suitable for you, will be discussed with you prior to you taking up your post. Salary Information Pay for this role is from £55,557 to £66,058. The maximum salary for the grade is £66,058, however a Digital Allowance of up to £7,459 per annum is available for exceptional candidates. Digital Allowance is non-salary, and non-pensionable, and is classed as a temporary allowance. It is reviewed annually where it could be retained, amended, or removed. Our offer to successful candidates will be based on an assessment of your skills and experience as demonstrated at interview. Existing Civil Servants who secure a new role on lateral transfer should maintain their current salary. Existing Civil Servants who gain promotion may move to the bottom of the grade pay scale or 10% increase in salary whichever would be the greater. During the selection process, you will be assessed on the following Essential Criteria: Strong knowledge of several programming/coding languages i.e. Python, SQL, Proc SQL, but especially SAS, SAS E-guide, Informatica. Ability to design and undertake complex data and code analysis for effective quality assurance and to resolve processing issues. Strong knowledge of applying standards and tools to design, code, test, correct and document moderate-to-complex programs and scripts from agreed specifications and subsequent iterations. Ability to lead the development of a portfolio of ETL pipelines, across a range of complex and/or large volume data including effective delegation of work. Ability to undertake complex data and code analysis for effective quality assurance/QA and lead team to resolve processing issues. Establish standards, keep them up to date and ensure adherence to them. If you would like to learn more about the role, please contact caicy.sandford@dwp.gov.uk. Stage 1: Application Your application will consist of three parts: 1. A Personal Details application form. 2. Employment history - this should contain your work experience and any skills, qualifications and accomplishments relevant to the jobs you have completed, aligning with the essential criteria. 3. Personal statement - 250 words. Please use your 250 words in this section to answer the following statement: Tell us about your experience of being involved in technical change and specifically your experience on working on major technical migration projects. Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form. An initial sift will be conducted using the Personal Statement above. Candidates who pass the initial sift will progress to a full sift which will include your Employment History. For Hints and Tips on completing your application visit Applying for jobs at DWP Digital. Important Information You will be asked to complete your employment history any information that you would customarily share on a CV should therefore be entered onto the application form. Personal details that could be used to identify you including your name, contact details and address must be removed for your application to be considered. If your employment history/personal statement contains any personal details your application will be withdrawn. We recognise that AI may be helpful when applying for this role, but it is important to use it in the right way. Read the DWP AI Candidate Guide to understand how you can make the best use of GenAI while ensuring your application remains authentic and effective. Stage 2: Interview If you're successful at sift stage you will be invited to a video interview via Microsoft Teams. There, you will be assessed against the essential criteria listed in the person specification. You will be asked to do a 5-minute presentation on your involvement in a major technical migration. Interviews will take place from Mid-July. Further information Find out more about Working for DWP If high application volumes are received, the benchmark for candidates to proceed to the next stage may be raised. In line with our commitment to the Disability Confident Scheme (DCS), we aim to advance all candidates applying under the DCS who meet the minimum standard. However, we may only progress those candidates who best meet the required standards. A reserve list may be held for a perio d of 6 mon ths from which further appointments can be made. All successful candidates and those placed on reserve will be posted in merit list order by location. Security Clearance Requirement You must meet the security requirements before you can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check. For meaningful checks to be carried out, you will need to have lived in the UK for a sufficient period of time, to enable appropriate checks to be carried out and produce a result which provides the required level of assurance. Whilst a lack of UK residency in itself is not necessarily a bar to a security clearance, and expectation of UK residency may range from 3 to 5 years. Failure to meet the residency requirements needed for the role may result in the withdrawal of provisional jobs offers. For further information on National Security Vetting please visit the Demystifying Vetting website. The Civil Service values honesty and integrity and expects all candidates to abide by these principles. Please ensure that all examples provided in your application are taken directly from your own experience and that you describe the examples in your own words. Applications will be screened and if evidence of plagiarism or copying examples/answers from other sources is found, your application will be withdrawn. Internal DWP candidates may also face disciplinary action. Reasonable Adjustment At DWP we value diversity and inclusion and actively encourage and welcome applications from everyone, including those that are underrepresented in our workforce. We consider visible and non-visible disabilities, neurodiversity or learning differences, chronic medical conditions, or mental ill health. Examples include dyslexia, epilepsy, autism, chronic fatigue, or schizophrenia. If you need a change to be made so that you can make your application, you should: Contact Government Recruitment Service via as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs. Complete the "Reasonable Adjustments" section in the "Additional requirements" page of your application form to tell us what changes or help you might need further on in the recruitment process. For instance, you may need wheelchair access at interview, or if you're deaf, a Language Service Professional. For further information on reasonable adjustments, terms and conditions and how we recruit visit the How we recruit page. Feedback