Data Engineer - Innovation and Development - 105065 - Grade 8

Position Details

Innovation and Development, Academic Services

Location: University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK

Full time starting salary is normally in the range £46,485 to £55,295 with potential progression once in post to £62,098

Grade: 8

Full Time, Fixed Term contract up to December 2025

Closing date: 2nd January 2025

Our offer to you

People are at the heart of what we are and do.

The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years, and we are equally proud to be recognised as a leading global university. We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success.

We are committed to helping the people who work here to develop through our sector-leading Birmingham Professional programme which provides all professional services staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential. With almost 5,000 professional services jobs in a wide-range of functions in Edgbaston and in our campus in Dubai, there are plenty of opportunities for you to be able to develop your career at the University.

We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation, and debate. We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are, and how we work.

Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University and, depending on the role, we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements. We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible working. In addition, you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, and a pension scheme. We also have three high quality subsidised day nurseries.

The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site. On campus we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum and botanical gardens.

Find out more about the benefits of working for the University of Birmingham

Background

StARS (Student Administration Refresh and Simplification) is a University-wide programme to simplify, standardise and improve our student administration services, enabled by replacement and upgrade of our student record system. Its vision is to deliver a better experience for students, academics and Professional Services staff; and enables a fundamental shift towards a more flexible set of capabilities and services that are fit for the future.

Role Summary

We are looking for a Data Engineer with extensive experience of Snowflake Cloud based data platforms. The primary focus of this role will be the development of a Snowflake data warehouse environment and will include using ETL tools, DBT and Tableau/Power BI for reporting and data visualisations. 

As the ideal candidate you will be adept at working with large data sets to develop advanced, scalable Data solutions from end-to-end. The University is still at the early stages of building a Cloud based Data Warehouse based on Snowflake hosted on MS Azure. The basic architecture has been established and various system components talk to each other but there is still a lot to do and this will be a huge opportunity for the right person to take ownership of the Data Platform and take it to the next level. You will be a hands-on Data Engineer who thrives on working in a varied and challenging environment and will use your technical knowledge to advice on what and how we ingesting & model data, and how we are using insights to drive key business decision making. You must have strong experience using a variety of data architecture/data modelling techniques. You must also have a proven ability to design, develop and implement advanced data warehousing solutions and be comfortable working with a wide range of stakeholders and functional teams to understand business needs.

Main Duties

Systems Design

• Analyses, specifies and designs large or complex business intelligence solutions. 
• Selects appropriate software design standards, methods and tools, consistent with agreed enterprise and solution architectures and ensures they are applied effectively. 
• Reviews others' systems designs to ensure selection of appropriate technology, efficient use of resources, and integration of multiple systems and technology.
• Contributes to policy for selection of architecture components. 
• Evaluates and undertakes impact analysis on major design options and assesses and manages associated risks. Ensures that the system design balances functional, service quality, security and systems management requirements.
•  Articulates and socialises designs and options to other members of the team and wider stakeholder community implementing and working through feedback into new and existing solutions.

Programming/Software Development

• Contributes to local or team-based standards for BI programming tools and techniques, including security guidelines, and the selection of appropriate development methods. 
• Advises on application of standards and methods and ensures compliance. 
• Takes technical responsibility for all stages and/or iterations in a software development project, providing method specific technical advice and guidance to project stakeholders. 
• Takes responsibility for work packages, monitors performance and manages change control dynamically, to optimise productivity. Provides advice, guidance and assistance to other colleagues as required.

Software release and deployment

• Assesses and analyses release components. Provides suggestions, input and advice to scheduling. 
• Supports the builds and tests in coordination with testers and component specialists maintaining and administering the tools and methods – manual or automatic - and ensuring, where possible, information exchange with configuration management. Ensures release processes and procedures are followed and maintained.

Business Intelligence Methods and Tools 

• Provides expertise and support on use of methods, techniques and tools.
•  Supports other colleagues in all these areas.

Emerging Technology Monitoring

• Maintains awareness of opportunities provided by new technology to address challenges or to enable new ways of working. 
• Within own sphere of influence, works to further organisational goals, by the study and use of emerging technologies and products. 
• Contributes to briefings and presentations about their relevance and potential value to the organisation.

Technology Leadership and Innovation

• Provides organisational leadership and guidelines to promote the development and exploitation of business intelligence solutions in the organisation. 
• Recognises potential strategic application of business intelligence development capabilities. 
• Initiates and manages investigation and development of innovative methods, practices and technology, to the benefit of the organisation. 
• Plays an active and dynamic role in improving the interface between all interested parties, facilitating knowledge flow to enable sharing and development of creative ideas.

Relationship and Stakeholder Management

• Implements stakeholder engagement including handling of problems and issues to resolution (taking ownership) and producing corrective actions and lessons learned where applicable. 
• Uses feedback from customers and stakeholders to help measure effectiveness of stakeholder management. 
• Helps develop and enhance customer and stakeholder relationships.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience

• Snowflake certified with relevant hands on experience
• ETL tools – how to build data pipelines using cloud ETL Tools and advanced data ingestion techniques
• Working knowledge of DBT tooling
• Tableau/Power BI experience of integration with a cloud warehouse
• Data architecture and modelling experience (eg. facts and dimensions, materialized views etc)
• Experience with source control systems such as GIT
• Experience of working agile teams using methodologies such as Scrum or Kanban
• Experience of supporting junior developers
• Experience of developing and using continuous integration and development pipelines
• Data Warehouse Design - a demonstrable and broad understanding of best practices, common issues and how to solve them
• Advanced skills in SQL
• Ability to present findings in a structured, clear manner with actionable insights
• Excellent communication skills for translating data insights into concise executive summaries and presentations

Informal enquiries to Mary Li, email: m.li@bham.ac.uk 

View our staff values and behaviours here 

We believe there is no such thing as a 'typical' member of University of Birmingham staff and that diversity in its many forms is a strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation and debate at the heart of University life. We are committed to proactively addressing the barriers experienced by some groups in our community and are proud to hold Athena SWAN, Race Equality Charter and Disability Confident accreditations. We have an Equality Diversity and Inclusion Centre that focuses on continuously improving the University as a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. We are also committed to sustainability, which is a key part of our strategy. You can find out more about our work to create a fairer university for everyone on our website.