Principal Engineer (Data)

AWS-focused Principal Data Engineer to lead the development and implementation of our University Data Hub. This role offers a unique opportunity to drive data engineering innovation in higher education.

What is our University Data Hub?

The University is undertaking a strategic project to improve its Data & Insights capability, enabling the right people to get access to information and insight at the right time, with the right quality. We are currently building a brand-new University Data Hub in the AWS cloud, completely replacing an old on-premises solution, which will be retired. The production UDH will transform and integrate data from as many sources as required, including live operating data, key data snapshots, and external datasets. It will manage structured and unstructured datasets, perform analysis of incoming data quality to inform data governance work, act as a single source of the truth, and underpin all analytics activity. It will support reports and dashboards via the Data Marketplace, with advanced modelling and machine learning as internal capacity and capability allow.

What you will do:

• Develop ETL pipelines using AWS Glue, Kinesis, and Step Functions
• Manage and optimise large-scale data lakes with S3, Athena, and Lake Formation
• Implement robust data quality processes using Glue Data Quality and machine learning models
• Design event-driven architectures with EventBridge and Lambda
• Ensure data security through Macie, KMS, and advanced encryption frameworks

Key Responsibilities:

• Design and implement a modern data infrastructure
• Develop and scale a governed, comprehensive self-service data platform serving over 3,500 staff
• Create real-time analytics solutions for university-wide operational insights
• Design and build scalable machine learning operations pipelines for predictive analytics

Professional Growth Opportunities:

• Spearhead the adoption of DataOps and MLOps methodologies
• Explore applications of emerging technologies in data processing
• Engage with the open-source community in data engineering projects
• Provide mentorship and technical leadership to a team of data engineers

Experience of skills in the following tools/domains:

• Demonstrated expertise in building scalable, cloud-native data platforms on AWS, leveraging EC2, S3, RDS, VPC, Glue (Data Quality, Studio, DataBrew), Kinesis, Step Functions, EventBridge, SNS, CloudWatch, and Macie for secure, event-driven data solutions
• Experienced across core data domains, including:
• Data Engineering: ETL design, data cleansing, and batch/streaming pipelines
• Data Platforms: Data lakes, warehouses, and metadata management
• Analytics: OLAP, reporting, and visualisation (Power BI, etc.)
• Databases: Oracle, SQL Server, etc.
• Strong focus on delivering scalable, governed, and insight-ready data solutions

This role is offered on a full time (36.5 hours per week), permanent basis. There is a market supplement of up to £5,800 available at our discretion, based on skills and experience.

What we can offer you:

• a very generous employer contributory pension scheme
• generous annual leave allowance with an additional 5 discretionary days so that you can enjoy a positive work-life balance
• we are a family-friendly University and with an increasingly agile workforce, are open to flexible working arrangements
• an excellent reward package that recognises the talents of our diverse workforce
• a wide range of personal and professional development opportunities
• a number of support options available for new and existing staff to help with the cost of some immigration expenses, which you may be eligible for: Relocation allowance, Visa Reimbursement, Interest-Free Loan

We consider ourselves to be a university where difference is celebrated, respected and encouraged. We have an excellent international reputation with staff from over 60 different nations and have made a positive commitment towards gender equity and intersectionality, receiving a Silver Athena SWAN award. We truly believe that diversity of experience, perspectives, and backgrounds will lead to a better environment for our employees and students and encourage applications from all genders, backgrounds, and communities, particularly from underrepresented groups, and value the positive impact that will have on the university.

We are committed to maintaining a safe and secure environment for our students, staff, and community by reinforcing our Safer Recruitment commitment.

We're very proud to be a signatory of the Armed Forces Covenant, an accredited Disability Confident Leader, and an autism friendly university, committed to building disability confidence and supporting disabled staff.

Right to Work in the UK: We do not assess immigration or right to work status until offer stage. Being invited to interview does not guarantee you are eligible for visa sponsorship, and all offers are conditional on meeting right to work requirements. Further information is available on our application support webpage.

Anonymous shortlisting: We are constantly seeking to reduce the unconscious bias that enters any assessment process, with the goal of creating an inclusive and equal assessment process. To support this, personal details such as your name may be removed from application forms at the initial shortlisting stage.