Senior Data Engineer National Institute of Teaching; NIoT

Hybrid, within commuting distance of Birmingham, Bristol, London, Blackburn, Redcar or Doncaster £56,667 + benefits (+ London weighting, if applicable)

We are seeking a motivated and enthusiastic Senior Data Engineer to join our TED team and play an important role in building and maintaining the technical infrastructure that supports the NIoT and TED.

The National Institute of Teaching (NIoT) has an unswerving commitment to high-quality, evidence-informed teacher education, and is on a mission to improve teacher and leader development across the education system.

A key part of that mission is our Teacher Education Dataset (TED), an ambitious data and research initiative focused on building better evidence about teacher development and what makes teaching impactful. By bringing together education, research and digital infrastructure, TED will support new insight into how teachers develop, improve and thrive across their careers.

We are seeking a motivated and enthusiastic Senior Data Engineer to join our TED team and play an important role in building and maintaining the technical infrastructure that supports the NIoT and TED. Working at the intersection of data engineering, data and research, the postholder will help develop secure, reliable and scalable systems that enable robust analysis and contribute to high-quality, evidence-informed improvement across the sector.

• To ensure that the responsibilities of the role are carried out in a way which reflects the mission and the values of the NIoT.
• To be aware of and observe all policies, procedures, working practices and regulations, and in particular to comply with policies relating to Equal Opportunities, Health and Safety, Confidentiality, Data Protection and Financial Regulations, reporting any concerns to an appropriate person.
• To comply with all reasonable management requests.

• Design, build and maintain Azure-based data pipelines to support the ingestion, transformation and curation of TED datasets.
• Develop and maintain Azure SQL databases and research-facing schemas across raw, transformed and curated data layers.
• Write efficient, secure and well-structured T-SQL to support ingestion, validation, transformation and optimisation.
• Contribute to the development and ongoing refinement of a Common Data Model across multiple education data providers.
• Integrate and harmonise data from school MIS and EdTech platforms, including Bromcom, Arbor and Wonde.
• Build and maintain robust validation, logging, auditing and reconciliation processes to improve data quality and trust.
• Support secure data handling, including pseudonymisation, access control and compliance with data-sharing agreements and security requirements.
• Work closely with analysts, researchers, architects and partners to deliver scalable, analytics-ready data solutions.
• Contribute to agile planning, technical design, documentation and operational handover.

• Proven experience in data engineering, including building and maintaining production-grade data pipelines.
• Strong experience with Azure Data Factory and Azure SQL Server. Strong T-SQL skills, including schema design, stored procedures and query optimisation.
• Experience implementing validation, monitoring, logging and reconciliation controls within data pipelines.
• Strong understanding of secure data architecture and the handling of sensitive personal data.
• Experience with Azure Dev Ops, version control and CI/CD practices.
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills, with excellent attention to detail.
• Ability to communicate effectively and work successfully in a multidisciplinary team.

• Experience with education datasets, school MIS systems or EdTech platforms.
• Experience with common data models, longitudinal datasets or research-oriented data infrastructure.
• Experience with Power BI, Fabric or related analytics technologies.
• Experience in a public sector, education or high-governance data environment.
• Interest in applying data engineering to improve education and teacher development.

• Generous Annual Leave – 27 days’ holiday a year (plus 8 bank…