Senior Principal Data Engineer

GSK is a global leader in pharmaceuticals and healthcare, with a relentless commitment to advancing healthcare for the betterment of humanity. Our mission is to help people around the world do more, feel better, and live longer. We achieve this by researching, developing, and providing innovative medicines and vaccines. Our dedication to scientific excellence and ethical practices guides everything we do.

R&D at GSK is highly data-driven, and we’re applying AI/ML and data science to generate new insights, enable analytics, gain efficiencies and automation.

Job Description

This role is based in a team that working on projects involving AI/ML, generative AI, information retrieval, and data science.  The team’s future projects will be in diverse areas, such as regulatory, clinical, legal and HR. Versatility is key, with an ability to quickly understand domain data and requirements and translate them into solutions. You will interact with architects, software and data engineers, modelers, data scientists, AI/ML engineers, product owners as well as other team members in Clinical Solutions and R&D. You will actively participate in creating technical solutions, designs, implementations and participate in the relentless improvement of R&D Tech systems in alignment with agile and DevOps principles.

Data Engineering is responsible for the design, delivery, support, and maintenance of industrialised automated end-to-end data services and pipelines. They apply standardised data models and mapping to ensure data is accessible for end users in tools through use of APIs. They define and embed best practices and ensure compliance with Quality Management practices and alignment to automated data governance. They also acquire and process internal and external, structure and unstructured data in line with Product requirements.

As a Senior Principal Data Engineer, you will be able to develop a well-defined specification for a function, pipeline, service, or other sort of component, and a technical approach to building it, and deliver it at a high level. In that respect, you will be a technical contributor but will also provide leadership and guidance to junior data engineers. You will be aware of, and adhere to, best practice for software development in general (and data engineering in particular), including code quality, documentation, DevOps practices, and testing. You will ensure robustness of our services and serve as an escalation point in the operation of existing services, pipelines, and workflows. You should have awareness of the most common tools (languages, libraries, etc) in the data space, such as Spark, Databricks, Kafka, ADF/AirFlow, Snowflake, Denodo etc. and have experience working on Azure.

In this role you will

• Build modular code / libraries / services / etc using modern data engineering tools (Python/Spark, Databricks, Kafka, …) and orchestration tools (e.g. ADF, Airflow Composer)
• Produce well-engineered software, including appropriate automated test suites and technical documentation
• Ensure consistent application of platform abstractions to ensure quality and consistency with respect to logging and lineage
• Adhere to QMS framework and CI/CD best practices
• Provide leadership and guidance to junior data engineers

Why you?

Qualifications & Skills:

We are looking for professionals with these required skills to achieve our goals: 

• Bachelor’s degree in data engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related discipline
• Experience in industry as a Data Engineer
• Solid experience with working on Azure
• Experience with choosing appropriate data structures for scale and access patterns
• Knowledge and use of at least one common programming language (preferably Python), including toolchains for documentation and testing
• Exposure to modern software development tools / ways of working (e.g. git/GitHub, DevOps tools, …)
• Software engineering experience
• Hands on experience with logging and monitoring tools
• Exposure to common tools for data engineering (e.g. Spark, ADF/AirFlow, Databricks, Snowflake, Kafka, Denodo …)
• Demonstratable experience overcoming high volume, high compute challenges
• Familiarity with databases and SQL
• Familiarity with Data Mesh/Fabric concepts, with exposure to MS Fabric a bonus
• Exposure to automated testing techniques

Preferred Qualifications & Skills:

If you have the following characteristics, it would be a plus:

• Masters or PhD in Data Engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related discipline
• Azure certifications for data engineering

Closing Date for Applications: Friday 6th December 2024 (COB)

Please take a copy of the Job Description, as this will not be available post closure of the advert. 
When applying for this role, please use the ‘cover letter’ of the online application or your CV to describe how you meet the competencies for this role, as outlined in the job requirements above. The information that you have provided in your cover letter and CV will be used to assess your application.

During the course of your application, you will be requested to complete voluntary information which will be used in monitoring the effectiveness of our equality and diversity policies. Your information will be treated as confidential and will not be used in any part of the selection process.  If you require a reasonable adjustment to the application / selection process to enable you to demonstrate your ability to perform the job requirements, please contact 0808 234 4391. This will help us to understand any modifications we may need to make to support you throughout our selection process.

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Why GSK?

Uniting science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together.

GSK is a global biopharma company with a special purpose – to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together – so we can positively impact the health of billions of people and deliver stronger, more sustainable shareholder returns – as an organisation where people can thrive. We prevent and treat disease with vaccines, specialty and general medicines. We focus on the science of the immune system and the use of new platform and data technologies, investing in four core therapeutic areas (infectious diseases, HIV, respiratory/ immunology and oncology).

Our success absolutely depends on our people. While getting ahead of disease together is about our ambition for patients and shareholders, it’s also about making GSK a place where people can thrive. We want GSK to be a place where people feel inspired, encouraged and challenged to be the best they can be. A place where they can be themselves – feeling welcome, valued, and included. Where they can keep growing and look after their wellbeing. So, if you share our ambition, join us at this exciting moment in our journey to get Ahead Together.

As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we are open to all talent. In the US, we also adhere to Affirmative Action principles. This ensures that all qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment without regard to neurodiversity, race/ethnicity, colour, national origin, religion, gender, pregnancy, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, age, disability, genetic information, military service, covered/protected veteran status or any other federal, state or local protected class*(*US only).

We believe in an agile working culture for all our roles. If flexibility is important to you, we encourage you to explore with our hiring team what the opportunities are.

Should you require any adjustments to our process to assist you in demonstrating your strengths and capabilities contact us on Ukdiversity.recruitment@gsk.com or 0808 234 4391. 

Please note should your enquiry not relate to adjustments, we will not be able to support you through these channels. However, we have created a UK Recruitment FAQ guide. Click the link and scroll to the Careers Section where you will find answers to multiple questions we receive .

As you apply, we will ask you to share some personal information which is entirely voluntary. We want to have an opportunity to consider a diverse pool of qualified candidates and this information will assist us in meeting that objective and in understanding how well we are doing against our inclusion and diversity ambitions. We would really appreciate it if you could take a few moments to complete it.  Rest assured, Hiring Managers do not have access to this information and we will treat your information confidentially.

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