HM Revenue & Customs
Lead Data Engineer
Get notified of more jobs like this · No spam, ever
How your CV stacks up
Upload your CV to see how well it fits this job role
?%
About The Job
Job summary
Discover a career in your hands at HMRC. Whether you're seeking purpose, growth, or a workplace that gives you a true sense of belonging, hear from some of our employees as they share their story about what it's really like to work at HMRC.
Visit our YouTube channel to watch the full series and come and discover your potential.
HMRC is delivering one of the largest and most complex digital transformations in the UK public sector. We provide services to over 45 million individuals and 4.9 million businesses, underpinned by a modern, secure, and scalable data platform.
As a Lead Data Engineer in Data Platform Services (DPS), you will play a critical role in shaping and operating the data platforms that enable analytics, insight, and decision making across HMRC. You will lead engineering activity across large scale data services, ensuring they are reliable, secure, and fit for future demand.
We are committed to building an inclusive environment where everyone can thrive. We offer flexible working patterns and support career development through our Data Academy and Government Digital and Data profession pathways.
Job Description
You will lead the engineering and operation of an area within HMRC's strategic data analytics platforms, ensuring high availability and performance at national scale.
Working across multiple product oriented delivery teams, you will provide technical leadership for data ingestion, transformation, and exploitation services. You will collaborate with engineers, analysts, architects, and business stakeholders to evolve platforms that support advanced analytics, reporting, and data science. You will also lead these teams in capability and their technical and strategic direction.
This is a hands on leadership role requiring strong technical expertise alongside the ability to lead teams of Data Engineers, influence stakeholders, and drive continuous improvement in a DevOps environment.
A requirement of this role is that candidates either have, or are willing to acquire, SC clearance. Please review GOV.uk guidance. If candidates are unable to meet the requirements of SC clearance, they may be rejected from the process.
Person specification
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the operation, support, and continuous improvement of enterprise data platforms and services.
- Provide technical leadership across multiple delivery teams, supporting agile ways of working.
- Expertise and experience in a technical area responsible for delivering outcomes to challenging timescales.
- Ensure appropriate security controls and data governance are embedded in platform services.
- Engage with internal users and stakeholders to improve self-service data capabilities.
- Work with suppliers and partners to design, build, and run data services at scale.
- Contribute to out-of-hours support and on-call rotas where required.
Essential Criteria
- Strong experience delivering and operating data platforms at scale, including data ingestion, transformation, and modelling in complex environments.
- Technical expertise in data engineering approaches and technologies, including at least one of the following:
- Distributed data platforms (e.g. Hadoop)
- Relational or NoSQL databases
- Data warehousing and data lake concepts
- Experience building and maintaining data pipelines using ETL/ELT tooling, with a focus on performance, data quality, and reliability, incorporating virtualization.
- Front end user tooling such as reporting and dashboarding, advanced analytics, machine learning, and AI.
- AWS and Azure Cloud Native products e.g. Glue, Dataflow, Databricks.
- Demonstrable leadership experience, including leading engineers or technical teams and guiding delivery in an agile/DevOps environment.
- Ability to apply security, governance, and best practice engineering standards within data platforms.
- Strong stakeholder engagement skills, including supporting business users and translating technical concepts into business outcomes.
Reasons to use Rodeo
Start with a chat, not a search bar
Grad scheme, placement, apprenticeship? Not sure what you want yet — that's fine. Your agent talks it through with you and turns "I have no idea" into a shortlist.
It searches the market for you
Every day your agent scans the market matching roles against what actually matters to you, not just keywords on a CV.
Only hits
No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.
Desirable Criteria
- A cloud (AWS/Azure) delivery background.
- Knowledge in the following: EMR, Lambda, S3, RDS, EC2, EBS, EFS, Neptune, VPC (network layer), APIs, Terraform, Cloudwatch, IAM, KMS.
Further Location Information
Please ensure that you only apply for a location that you are willing and able to work from, as we will only make one offer of employment. Any additional notes included in a 'Further Location Preferences (optional)' field within the application form, will not be considered. Please be aware that you cannot change your location preference after submitting your application.
Office closures
For more information on where you might be working, review this information on our locations.
If your location preference is for one of the following sites, it's important to note that these are not long-term sites for HMRC and we will require you to move to a new building in the future, subject to our location strategy and the applicable employee policies at that time.
These Sites Are
- Telford Plaza, Telford - moving to Parkside Court, Telford
- Trinity Bridge House, Salford - moving to an alternative office in Manchester/Salford
You will be given more information about what this means at the job offer stage.
Leeds Locations
Moves Adjustment Payment will be available for this role, provided the successful applicant is a current HMRC colleague in Bradford and meets the eligibility requirements outlined in the HMRC's Moves Adjustment Payment guidance.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
Leadership
Benefits
Alongside your salary of £58,541, HM Revenue and Customs contributes £16,959 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
HMRC operates both Flexible and Hybrid Working policies, allowing you to balance your work and personal commitments. We welcome applications from those who need to work a more flexible arrangement and will agree to requests where possible, considering our operational and customer service needs.
We offer a generous leave allowance, starting at 25 days and increasing by a day for every year of qualifying service up to a maximum of 30 days.
- Pension - We make contributions to our colleagues' Alpha pension equal to at least 28.97% of their salary.
- Family friendly policies.
- Personal support.
- Coaching and development.
To find out more about HMRC benefits and hear from our insiders or visit Thinking of joining the Civil Service.
Things you need to know
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate, and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.
Get help with your application
Your very own career expert that helps elevate your application to the next level.
Selection process details
This vacancy is using Success Profiles, and will assess your Behaviours and Experience.
How To Apply
As part of the application process, you will be asked to provide the following:
- A name-blind CV including your job history and previous experiences.
- A 500-word personal statement, describing how you meet the Person Specification and Essential Criteria.
Please complete a separate statement (Max 250 words) for the Desirable Criteria where applicable. This is not essential for the role but may be considered by the vacancy-holder where candidates have the same scores at interview.
Further details around what this will entail are listed on the application form.
Sift
At full sift your CV and your Personal Statement, will be assessed, with the successful candidates being invited to interview.
We may also raise the score required at any stage of the process if we receive a high number of applications.
Interview
During The Panel Interview, You Will Be Asked a Behaviour-based Question To Explore In Detail What You Are Capable Of As Well As Technical Questions To Assess Your Expertise In Data Engineering Approaches And Technologies, Including At Least One Of The Following:
- Distributed data platforms (e.g. Hadoop)
- Relational or NoSQL databases
- Data warehousing and data lake concepts
- Experience building and maintaining data pipelines using ETL/ELT tooling, with a focus on performance, data quality, and reliability, incorporating virtualization.
- Front end user tooling such as reporting and dashboarding, advanced analytics, machine learning, and AI.
- AWS and Azure Cloud Native products e.g. Glue, Dataflow, Databricks.
Interviews will take place via video link. Sift and interview dates to be confirmed. Please note that circumstances may arise that require the planned interview format to change. We will endeavour to provide you with as much notice of any change as possible.
Eligibility
Please take extra care to tick the correct boxes in the eligibility sections of your application form. Mistakes sometimes happen but if you contact us later than two working days (Monday-Friday) before the vacancy closes, we may not be able to reopen your application for you. If you do make a mistake with your eligibility form, or have withdrawn yourself in error and need your application reinstated whilst the campaign is still live, please contact us via: unitybusinessservicesrecruitmentresults@hmrc.gov.uk - Use the subject line to insert appropriate wording for example - 'Please re-open my application - [insert vacancy ref] & vacancy closing date [insert date]'.
To check that you are eligible to apply for this role, please review the eligibility information before submitting your application.
Sponsorship
We have assessed this role against both Home Office and HMRC criteria and we are unable to offer sponsorship for a Skilled Worker Visa. This means the vacancy is not open to applicants who require visa sponsorship.
The HMRC app can help you with your application
The HMRC app can provide you with your past 5 years' employment history, making the process of filling in your application quicker and easier.
If successful in your application, you will need your National Insurance number for the onboarding process.
Download the HMRC app now and save your National Insurance number
“It took my CV and asked me questions relevant to understanding what kind of jobs to suggest for me. Suggestions were almost perfect. Jobs were exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
Jessica, London
Skills