Senior Cloud Data Platform Engineer

We’re 1st Central, a market-leading insurance company utilising smart data and technology at pace. Rapid growth has been based on giving our 1.4 million customers exactly what they want: great value insurance with an excellent service. And that’s the same for our colleagues too; we won Insurance Employer of the Year at the British Insurance Awards 2024 and our Glassdoor score is pretty mega too!

We’re on the lookout for a Senior Cloud Data Platform Engineer to help us build the future of data at 1st Central. You’ll take the lead in shaping and scaling our Azure Data Platform - designing smart, secure, and scalable solutions that power everything from business intelligence to machine learning.

You’ll collaborate closely with Data Architects, Principal Engineers and teams across Tech to deliver infrastructure as code using tools like Bicep and Terraform. Whether it’s driving standards, co-authoring low-level designs, optimising performance or keeping our data secure, this is your chance to make a big impact in a forward-thinking, data-led business.

If you get excited about Azure, Infrastructure as Code, and enabling teams to do amazing things with data – keep reading.

Skills you’ll need to be a great fit for the role:

• Infrastructure as Code Mastery - you’ll be hands-on with Terraform and Bicep, deploying Azure infrastructure like a pro, with automation, templates, and CI/CD pipelines all part of your toolkit.
• Azure Know-How - you’ve got solid experience across Azure services – Synapse, Data Factory, Databricks, DevOps, networking - and you know how to keep things secure, efficient, and cost-effective.
• Great Communicator & Team Collaborator - whether you’re talking to data engineers, security, or stakeholders - you can translate tech talk into human-speak and work together to get things done.
• Creative Problem Solver - you love a good challenge. Troubleshooting, unpicking tricky infrastructure issues, and finding clever solutions - it’s all in a day’s work.

We’re big on flexible working, with offices in Salford Quays, Manchester and Haywards Heath, West Sussex, you'll spend most of your time working from home with occasional visits to the office, but of course, it’s your choice - if you prefer to be in the office more - that's good with us too.  If you live a bit further out, we’re open to remote working - we just ask that you pop in either monthly/bi-monthly to catch up in person, because collaborating with colleagues is always great, right?  

What’s involved:

• You’ll lead the development of new data & analytics capabilities in our Azure Data Platform by engaging with Data Architecture and Principal Data engineers and contributing to high level solution designs.
• You’ll provide technical leadership and implementation support for our new Data Science and ML Ops platform within our Azure Data ecosystem.
• You’ll communicate effectively with the data team, peers and key stakeholders to ensure the potential of the Azure Data Platform is understood and the importance of good practice instilled in every interaction.
• You’ll manage and maintain the infrastructure, connectivity, and security of our Azure Data Platform meeting our requirement to create intelligence from data while protecting our customer and commercial data.
• You’ll be responsible for co-authoring the low-level design of data solutions, taking high level solution architecture artefacts and translating them into workable designs and work packages.
• You’ll be responsible for creating and testing IaC (Infrastructure as Code) using Bicep, and Terraform for specific use-cases, to deliver projects maintaining deadlines in accordance with our release processes.
• You’ll create a Data Platform Services Roadmap to document and then consolidate the resources in our Azure Data Platform, targeting optimal performance, cost management and data security.
• You’ll create and contribute to the team standards, identifying and implementing improvements to processes, tools, and standards as well as creating suitable documentation.
• You’ll collaborate with different project teams across Data and Technology including IT data Ops, IT Ops, Networking, InfoSec and DPO.
• You’ll maintain effective, and appropriate documentation that brings transparency and understandability to pipelines created and code created.

Experience & knowledge

• Requires experience of designing and building end to end data solutions in Microsoft Cloud technologies for the purpose of Business Intelligence or Data Science purposes (5+ years).
• Experience with IAC (infrastructure as code) 3+ years
• Evidencable experience designing and building systems that scale, are resilient and performant with suitable monitoring, cost management and alerting capabilities.
• Expert in Infrastructure as code, network design, containerisation, and automation and CICD
• Experience defining Bicep to deploy Azure infrastructure, including use of modules and templates.
• Experience defining Azure DevOps build and release YAML pipelines should be included.
• Experience with source control providers, preferably Git
• Proven to be an excellent communicator with a clear passion for data & analytics.
• Deep engineering and database skills in SQL, Server Azure Synapse, Data factory, spark compute and Databricks technologies.
• Experience of developing coding standards and deliver methods that others follow.
• Experience of testing techniques, tools and approaches.
• Extensive experience of the full data lifecycle.
• Will have been involved in the implementation of Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) methods
• Working in an agile, rapid development, and prototyping environment
• Good coach who enjoys helping others grow and develop
• Comply with the requirements, and act in accordance with, the Group Code of Conduct and Fitness and Propriety policies at all times
• Ensure compliance with Company Policies, Values and guidelines and other relevant standards/ regulations at all times

Skills

• You be an excellent creative problem solver who can deal with many different priorities at any one time.
• Proactive and optimistic about what can be achieved and has an infectious positivity.
• Excellent time management and organisation skills with the ability to prioritise multiple demands and manage stakeholder expectations effectively.
• Supporting and enthusiastic team player, who others follow, focussed on delivering shared outcomes.
• Able to follow, deliver changes to improve, standards and designs, ensuring their own work, and work of others, is of high quality

Sound like your kind of role? If you’re ready to take your cloud engineering skills to the next level and help drive data innovation at 1st Central – we’d love to hear from you. Apply now and let’s build something brilliant together.

What can we do for you?

People first. Always. We’re passionate about our colleagues and know the best people deserve an extraordinary working environment. We owe it to them so that’s what we offer. Our workplaces are energetic, inspirational, supportive. To get a taste of the advantages you’ll enjoy, take a look at all our perks in full here. 

Intrigued? Our Talent team can tell you everything you need to know about what we want and what we’re offering, so feel free to get in touch.