Senior Manager, Head of Data Engineering in Manchester

Make investing available to all, through world-class technology. We never stop working to make investing simpler and more successful for our clients. Vanguard is a digital-first company that relies on technology to effectively serve our 30+ million clients across the world and our 18,000 internal crew. We believe in relentless client focus, doing good for our communities, and focusing on long-term success for our employees. If you want to be on the frontline of changing the financial services industry, have a deep passion for analytics and technology, and love working with diverse & motivated colleagues, then we’re looking for you to join our team.

About the Head of Data Engineering for CDAO Europe: You will lead two full stack teams of Data, DataOps & MLOps Engineers building storage, transformation and analytical solutions with the Data & Analytics team. You will be working with an experienced team to support data engineers, data scientists, data analysts, business users, machine learning & AI engineers in implementing data pipelines and high-quality productionisation of ETL/ELT pipelines and complex models. We are modernizing our data foundations to support the AI-driven future and you will work with partners across Vanguard Europe to deliver our AI-ready data strategy, designing and implementing our future data technology stack to support Vanguard Europe’s ambitious goals.

In return we offer an attractive base salary, annual performance bonus paid in January, Partnership bonus paid in June, and competitive benefits. At Vanguard we work Monday to Friday and our staff in most roles work in the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with Mondays and Fridays working from home. As one of the world’s largest asset management firms, Vanguard can offer unrivaled career opportunities in Manchester, the UK, and further afield.

About CDAO Europe: You will be a key part of the Europe Data & Analytics leadership team and will play a significant role in delivering and implementing solutions across Vanguard Europe. We are a cloud native technology and data team, mostly leveraging AWS, sourcing data from internal and external systems to drive business decisions and direction. You will also have the opportunity to work within the broader enterprise data and analytics organization, bringing the best back to Europe and contributing to global best practice.

Core Responsibilities:

• Partners with internal and external clients to gain an expert understanding of business functions and informational needs.
• Works closely with other technical and data analytics experts across the business and external vendors to implement data solutions.
• Hires, evaluates, and supervises crew.
• Provides guidance and training as necessary to develop crew.
• Sets performance standards, reviews performance, and makes informed compensation decisions in accordance with all applicable Human Resources policies and procedures.
• Manages and optimizes the automation of key ETL (Extract / Transform / Load) and quality assurance processes for large volumes of data.
• Consults with department or function heads on the implementation, transition, and operating plans.
• Executes and adjusts plans for team of Data Engineers.
• Develops a clear understanding of Data Analytics and Management work across Vanguard businesses and how they connect.
• Manages the planning, prioritization, and execution of data production projects and processes.
• Manages and troubleshoots the design and development of software and processes to support large scale, efficient data pipelines.
• Integrates complex and large scale data from a variety of sources for business partners to generate insight and make decisions.
• Supports dashboarding efforts, data science and engagement projects, and production support as needed.
• Translates business specifications into design specifications and code.
• Responsible for writing complex programs, ad hoc queries, and reports.
• Ensures that all code is well structured, includes sufficient documentation, and is easy to maintain and reuse.
• Develops and exercises cross-functional data delivery to support business needs.
• Manages data integrity and quality standards.
• Educates and develops junior data engineers on the team while applying quality control to their work.
• Develops data engineering standards and contributes expertise to other data expert teams across Vanguard.
• Participates in special projects and performs other duties as assigned.

Qualifications we’re looking for:

• Strong people leadership experience (teams with more than five people would be advantageous).
• Strong Data/DataOps Engineering experience.
• Experience in medium to large business that consume large amounts of data.
• Excellent communication and storytelling skills; Ability to articulate complex problems in a simple manner.
• First-hand experience with Python/Pyspark in building end-to-end data pipelines.
• Understanding DBA concepts; Prior experience working in/with DevOps or Data Engineers teams; Comfortable with DevOps/SRE thinking.
• Knowledge and experience in designing, implementing, deploying and configuring AWS resources.
• Experience with SCRUM-Agile mindset and implementation tools such as Jira, Azure DevOps.
• DataLake, Lakehouse & EDW methodologies; Data analysis, data modelling, data integration, data warehousing and database design; AWS Stack.
• Understanding of GIT, post/pre-scripting and CI/CD workflow under TDD using Jira/Azure DevOps.
• Support multiple environments (Dev, UAT, Prod) and a strong understanding of SDLC concepts.
• Degree qualified in a relevant commercial, analytical or mathematical discipline or equivalent experience.

Beneficial but not required skills:

• Knowledge of traditional ETL/ELT process and tools (Informatica, Talend, SSIS, Alteryx).
• Experience working with vendor/3rd party data providers.
• Experience in multiple database technologies including: Distributed Processing (such as Spark, Hadoop, EMR), Traditional RDBMS (such as MS SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL), MPP (such as Databricks, AWS Redshift, MS Fabric Lakehouse, Teradata, Snowflake, Greenplum, Synapse), NoSQL (such as DynamoDB); Strong understanding of CDC/CT/Deltas mechanisms.
• Tableau and/or PowerBI exposure.
• Understanding of the Financial Services industry, preferably with applicable experience.

How We Work: Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for the majority of our crew members, designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in-person learning, collaboration, and connection. We believe our mission-driven and highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long-term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.