Data Engineering Lead

Data Engineering Lead
£100,000 to £110,000 plus great benefits, including up to 10% employer pension contributions, private healthcare, and a company car or car allowance (Work Level 4)
Manchester City Centre (Hybrid)

We’re looking for a Data Engineering Lead to join our Digital Technology & Data team in Manchester to help take our data driven decision-making to the next level. We already have modern cloud platforms in place (Databricks, Azure) and use data far and wide across Co-op. We want your help to scale our team, empower more self-service, and help our Data Engineers be even more impactful with their work. In this role, you’ll work in a hybrid way – spending 1 to 2 days per week working from the office (find out more about our hybrid working policy at https://jobs.coop.co.uk/hybrid-working-policy).

As our Data Engineering Lead, you’ll lead the development of data connections and pipelines through our Lakehouse architecture – feeding BI and Data Science as well as securely sharing data with third parties and our partners. We’ve got really exciting plans for monetising data, insights, and analytics throughout our supply chain, and we’re looking for your help to carry these out.

You’ll be responsible for setting standards and driving improvements across our data engineering capabilities, as well as supporting the delivery of our most complex and high-impact projects. We’ll also look to you to keep our data pipelines and operations running smoothly, and explore opportunities for us to make these even better. That includes supporting your team’s learning and development, working with third-party training providers to facilitate and enable this.

This is a really exciting time to join us at Co-op, as we continue to modernise our data platforms and deliver more value for our member-owners. The best bit is that you’ll get to work alongside talented colleagues in an agile, supportive, and collaborative environment. If you’ve got the skills and experience we’re looking for, and you’re excited to get stuck in, this is a great opportunity to help us continue putting data at the heart of everything we do – helping us to keep doing right by our customers, colleagues, and member-owners.

What you’ll do

• Lead the design of our data platform and drive engineering improvements across Co-op
• Shape and deliver team training plans, working with external providers to help facilitate this
• Line manage up to 10 colleagues and support a wider team of around 30 data colleagues
• Establish peer review and quality control processes
• Define and track KPIs and SLAs for data storage and delivery
• Support the development and adoption of a Co-op-wide enterprise data model
• Make sure all pipelines and data connections are documented in line with our data architecture standards

We’re open to applications from people who may require flexible working arrangements, such as condensed working hours, part-time or a job share. There’ll be an opportunity to discuss your flexible working requirements during the interview process, and at offer stage.

This role would suit people who have

• Significant experience in data engineering and data platform design
• Experience leading a data engineering or data-focussed software engineering team
• Proficiency with our data software (Azure Data Factory, Databricks)
• A track record of supporting their team’s learning and development
• Good communication and relationship-building skills, with the ability to influence and challenge people, of all levels of seniority, inclusively
• The ability to manage third-party supplier relationships effectively

We understand that not everyone will meet every requirement listed in our job description. At Co-op, we’re committed to building an inclusive working environment. So, if you’re interested in this role but your experience doesn’t tick every box, we still encourage you to apply. You might be exactly who we’re looking for – either for this role or another opportunity.

Why Co-op?

If you’ve got the skills and experience we’re looking for, we can offer you a competitive salary and great benefits package which includes 30% off Co-op branded products in our food stores (as well as other discounts on Co-op products and services). You’ll also get a range of benefits aligned to your home role, which include:

• Private healthcare
• A company car or £6,000 car allowance
• An annual incentive scheme (based on personal and business performance)
• 28 days holiday (rising to 32 with service) plus bank holidays
• A pension with up to 10% employer contributions
• Access to a subsidised onsite gym (at our Manchester HQ)
• Coaching and training to support your career development
• Wagestream – a money management app that gives you access to a percentage of your pay as you earn it
• Grocery Aid – 24/7 access to a range of emotional, financial, and practical support services for you and your family

Building an inclusive work environment

At Co-op, we’re proud to do things a different way. As one of the world’s largest co-operatives, owned by millions of members, community is at the heart of what we do. Since our Co-op was founded in 1844, we’ve had a clear social purpose, and everything we do as a business helps to build more value for our member-owners every day.

We’re actively building diverse teams and we welcome applications from everyone. If you have a disability, we can make reasonable adjustments to our recruitment process according to your needs. We're also part of the Disability Confident scheme, meaning we'll always offer an interview to disabled candidates who apply through the scheme if they meet the minimum criteria for a job.

We'll ask whether you’d like to be considered under the Disability Confident scheme when you apply.

If we invite you to take part in the recruitment process for any of our jobs, we’ll ask you if you need any reasonable adjustments to enable you to participate.

You can find out more about our recruitment process at jobs.coop.co.uk/apply-process.

You can find out more about the Disability Confident scheme at Disability Confident Scheme - Co-op Colleagues and more about our commitments to diversity and inclusion here