Data Engineering Graduate

Contract type: Permanent

Location: Hatfield (Hybrid working - 3 days in the office)

Working hours per week: 40 hours

Level: Entry level
- Graduate

Starting Salary: £32,000

Final date to receive applications: Sunday 1st November 2026

Scheme commences: September 2027

Our mission is to deliver joy in every shop, through unbeatable choice, unrivalled service, and reassuringly good value.

We’re Ocado Retail, a market-leading joint venture between Ocado Group and M&S, and the world’s largest dedicated online supermarket,  Not only is  the only place to shop a full range of M&S food online, it’s also the home to the widest online supermarket range in the UK and champion of small, independent brands. We’re also the brains behind Zoom by Ocado, our same-day grocery delivery service.

Any online business generates an enormous quantity of raw data, and we’re no different. The difference is made in what you do with it. Intelligent use of data and information is at the heart of how Ocado Retail does what it does. Every significant decision is backed up with data-driven evidence. Every change is tried and analysed to understand how we can be even better.

We make sure that data flows seamlessly from where it’s made to where it needs to get to for a decision to be made, and we ensure that it’s delivered in the way that is easiest for the decision-makers to use and understand.

We use Google Cloud Platform (GCP) tools to automate bringing data into our cloud environment, processing it, and storing it in our analytical database. We have machine learning tools watching the data we land to ensure no errors or other quality issues creep in undetected. Once in the analytical database, we help our Insights team understand it and use it to inform business decisions or we automate data feeds onwards into other systems that need to use it.

We create interactive dashboards for less technical business users to allow them to explore data and serve as many of their information needs themselves as possible. We are also responsible for some of the cloud infrastructure that allows all this to happen.

There’s a certain satisfaction to using the huge power of cloud computing to automate tasks that would be impossible for people to do alone. The skills we learn can be applied to any area of the business - from personalisation of the customer experience to help our suppliers understand how selling products online is different from their decades of knowledge selling in shops, to saving our Finance teams the job of manipulating data so they can focus their energy where it matters most.

• This scheme will initially be all about programming. You start by learning SQL, Python and how to effectively use an AI LLM code assistant, then spend the first couple of placements in our Data Engineering and Reporting teams, using those skills to improve the code base that our entire data ecosystem is built on. There will then be opportunities to rotate into other areas of the business and explore more of the lifecycle of Data, expanding your experience in areas such as IT, Governance and Analytics.

• The Data Engineering team is responsible for much of the automation of our data. They take data from a huge number of systems and combine it into a clearly labelled data warehouse for the rest of the business to use. They work closely with analysts and other data users to explore and add new data to keep pace with our constantly evolving business.
  
  They need to really get under the skin of the business and understand all the nuances of how its systems work to simplify it for all other data users.

• The Reporting team turns vast, complex datasets into clear, actionable clarity for every…