Principal Data Engineer in Sheffield

Location: Croydon | Sheffield | Manchester

Salary: £76,117 (National) £80,237 (London) plus skills allowance of up to £19,483 pending assessment

Advert Close: 25th May 2026

Home Office Digital designs, builds and develops services for the rest of the department and for government. Every year our systems support up to 3 million visa applications, checks on 100 million border crossings, up to 8 million passport applications and deliver 140 million police checks on people, vehicles and property.

Principal Data Engineers lead multi-functional delivery teams to deliver robust data services for their department, other government departments and private sector partners. Through technical direction and leadership, you will create and nurture an environment that emphasises motivation, empowerment, teamwork, continuous improvement and a passion for providing service. You will work with other members of the data community to set the enterprise data strategy and standards and agree implementation and governance.

Your main day to day responsibilities will be:

• Providing technical direction and leadership within the Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Data Platform team to maximise its effectiveness and inspire best practice for data products and services.
• Developing capabilities in Oracle EPM tools and techniques to analyse large data-sets and from multiple/complex sources that will enable broader Data Science models and algorithms to uncover insights, trends, and patterns in the data.
• Leading in defining our EPM data strategy and roadmap influenced by future technology changes and implemented through best practice and governance.
• Managing stakeholders at all levels, including facilitating discussions around complex topics and managing performance expectations.
• Initiating and facilitating partnership with other technical and non-technical departments and outside of government to champion data engineering and help them understand how data solutions can benefit them while ensuring easy and effective access to data resources.
• Building the EPM data engineering capability through coaching and mentoring.
• Providing technical leadership for Oracle EPM-aligned Infrastructure engineering team, ensuring data services and integrations support planning, forecasting and financial and HR reporting outcomes.
• Working with EPM Product Management, Solution Architects, Data Architects and Database Administrators to define and enforce integration standards, data governance and patterns across the Oracle EPM landscape.
• Ensuring data services and EPM integrations comply with Managing Public Money, HMT Green Book, Cabinet Office spend controls and departmental data governance policies.
• Responsible for the data quality and data flow of the EPM data from all source system to the target systems including system availability and meeting reporting agreements.
• Automating existing BAU processes within the EPM data and administrative framework.

Skills and experience:

• Ability to align EPM implementations with public sector finance and governance requirements, including Managing Public Money, HMT Green Book, Cabinet Office spend controls and departmental data governance policies.
• Demonstrable functional and technical experience across Oracle EPM modules including Planning, EDM, Narrative Reporting, FCCS, PCMCS and ARCS in a central government department.
• Functional and technical experience designing, developing, testing and governing data integrations across Oracle EPM and connected systems (e.g., ERP, HCM, data warehouses, analytics platforms) to improve data quality, consistency and readiness in line with public sector requirements.
• Technical knowledge of EPM-specific automation and integration approaches and tools such as EPM Automate, Oracle Data Integration, REST APIs, and relevant scripting/implementation languages used within EPM ecosystems (e.g., MDX, Calc Script, Groovy).
• Proven experience with Oracle IA Agent Studio to automate routine admin tasks.
• Ability to lead adoption of cloud-based data technologies and strategies, including Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and integration with Azure/AWS.
• Proven ability to manage complex multi-supplier and support environments in a central government department, ensuring effective coordination, service integration and accountability across internal teams and external partners.
• Effectively leading and managing multiple teams, helping them deliver EPM technical products and projects in data analysis, solution design and end user reporting in a central government department.
• Interpreting requirements and presenting complex ideas and recommendations that inform wider decisions in a clear way, to technical and non-technical audiences and senior customers.
• Strong stakeholder engagement skills, including facilitating discussions around complex topics and managing performance expectations.

Qualifications: A qualification in accounting or an equivalent data science degree is essential.

Benefits: Find out more information at: Benefits - Home Office Careers, but some of the primary ones are:

• A Civil Service Pension with employer contribution rates of at least 28.97%.
• In-year reward scheme for one-off or sustained exceptional personal or team achievements.
• 25 days annual leave on appointment, rising with service.
• 8 days of public holidays, plus 1 additional privilege day.
• Where business needs allow, some roles may be suitable for a combination of office and home-based working. This is a non-contractual arrangement where all employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in an office.