Senior Data Engineer

Join Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. At Moorfields, people’s sight matters—and so do the people who make it possible. For over 200 years, Moorfields has been at the forefront of ophthalmic care, research, and education. With more than 2,300 dedicated team members and over 700,000 patients seen annually across our City Road site and 22 networked sites, we are proud to be a global centre of excellence.

We’re also a vibrant community where kindness, equity and excellence shape every aspect of our work. Whether it’s pioneering research through our partnership with UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Biomedical Research Centre or training the next generation of global eye‑care leaders, we’re united by one mission—delivering world‑class eye health, sustainably and at scale.

Job Overview: We are at a pivotal stage of our digital journey and have an ambitious portfolio of digital technology initiatives ahead of us, all grounded around empowering patients and service users, improving the experience navigating the healthcare system, and joining up systems and data across to better meet the needs of citizens. The data engineering service provides a central platform to support the Trust’s data analytics, reporting and day‑to‑day operational service delivery and is responsible for the end‑to‑end data engineering lifecycle.

Main duties of the job:

• A senior data engineer designs and leads the implementation of data flows to connect operational systems, data for analytics and business intelligence (BI) systems.

At This Role Level, You Will:

• Write complex ETL (extract, transform, load) scripts and code and optimise to ensure processes perform optimally.
• Recognise opportunities to reuse existing data flows.
• Lead work on data engineering.
• Lead the build of data flows / data streaming systems.

You will support all parts of our organisation, and be focused on one or more areas:

• Clinic and ward builds.
• Master patient data.
• Active referrals and referral to treatment (RTT) pathways.
• Active outpatient appointments.
• Active inpatient TCIs.

You will put people at the heart of everything you do – with a relentless focus on user experience and ensuring all our user needs are met across sites at Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

Working for our organisation:

• Salary including High‑Cost Area Supplement.
• Opportunity to join the NHS Pension Scheme.
• Free 24/7 independent counselling service.
• Learning and development opportunities.
• Easy and quick transport links.
• A range of attractive benefits and discounts.
• Access to Blue Light Card and other NHS Discount Schemes.
• Free Pilates classes.
• Full support and training to develop your skills.
• Flexible working friendly organisation.

Detailed Job Description And Main Responsibilities:

• Leadership: Mentor and coach other members of the Data Engineering team, including supporting building long‑term capability in the team.
• Champion quality across the Digital, Data and Technology teams.
• Communicate effectively with technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Support and host discussions within a multidisciplinary team, with potentially difficult dynamics.
• Be an advocate for the team externally and can manage differing perspectives.

Continual service improvement: You know how to analyse current processes, identify and implement opportunities to optimise processes, and lead and develop a team of experts to deliver service improvements.

Data analysis and synthesis: Undertake data profiling and source system analysis, including documenting complex source‑to‑target mappings. Present clear insights to colleagues to support the end use of the data.

Data development process: Design, build and test data products that are complex or large scale. Build and contribute to teams to complete data integration services.

Data innovation: Understand the impact on the organisation of emerging trends in data tools, analysis techniques and data usage.

Data integration design: Produce relevant data models across multiple subject areas. Explain which models to use for which purpose and compare / align different models.

Data operations: Ensure the data operational environment is maintained, and with appropriate monitoring and coverage, automating remediation action(s) where possible.

Financial management: Understand how to balance cost versus value. Consider the impact of user needs.

Governance: Ensure our data engineering and operational practices consider secure by design principles, and clinical safety principles throughout the lifecycle.

Metadata management: Contribute to and update the metadata repository. Suggest changes to improve current metadata repositories.

Ownership and initiative: You can take accountability of issues that occur and be proactive in searching for potential problems.

Problem resolution (data): Respond to incidents and problems in databases, data processes, data products and services as they occur.

Programming and build (data engineering): Use agreed standards and tools to design, code, test, correct and document moderate‑to‑complex programs and scripts from agreed specifications and subsequent iterations.

Service focus: You know how to see the bigger picture and can investigate how to get the best of underlying services.

Service reporting: Responsible for ensuring that the service management platform and associated tooling is kept up to date with across your portfolio of services.

Technical understanding: Understand the core technical concepts related to the role and apply them with guidance.

Testing: Review requirements and specifications and define test conditions. Identify issues and risks associated with work.

Community of practice: Develop and maintain a network of professionals to enable continuous learning and a community which can share, learn, and keep up to date on the broader technology and data landscape.

Other Duties: Occasional work may be required outside of core business hours to support major projects / programmes.

Person specification:

Education And Qualifications:

• Essential criteria: Degree, or equivalent relevant level of experience with additional specialist knowledge.
• Relevant technical / data qualification, or equivalent experience.

Experience:

• Essential criteria: Experience in the role of a data engineer / data warehouse engineer, or equivalent role.
• Experience championing data to drive successful and improved outcomes.
• Experience designing, developing and operating multiple data / data warehouse technologies (SQL, Oracle, etc), or similar datasets and supporting technologies (SSRS, SSIS, etc).

Due to the nature of this position, employment is subject to proof of eligibility to work in the UK, completion of a satisfactory DBS disclosure and two references. Our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion is at the heart of our organisational culture.

Moorfields is a flexible working friendly organisation, and we are committed to helping our employees achieve a work‑life balance that is beneficial for health and wellbeing, motivation levels and job satisfaction.