Senior Data Engineer

About the Role

Senior Data Engineer
Permanent position
Home-based (Hybrid working)

The purpose of the role is to provide senior technical leadership and hands on delivery of the James Fisher & Sons ("JFS") data platform and data products. The Senior Data Engineer is accountable for designing, building, and maintaining scalable, secure, and high-quality data solutions that support operational and strategic decision making across the business.

Operating within the Data Target Operating Model (TOM), the role acts as the technical authority for data engineering practices, translates business priorities into deliverable technical solutions, and guides a small team of Data Engineers to consistently deliver trusted, high value data products.

The Senior Data Engineer works closely with business embedded Product Owners, enabling clear prioritisation, pragmatic solution design, and sustainable delivery while ensuring the long-term integrity of the data platform.

• Act as the senior technical authority for data engineering across the organisation.
• Define and enforce engineering standards, patterns, and best practices.
• Own key technical decisions and manage technical debt pragmatically.
• Manage, mentor and guide Data Engineers, supporting capability development and consistency.
• Design, build, and maintain an integrated data platform and lakehouse architecture that meets business needs.
• Develop and maintain logical and physical data models optimised for analytics and reporting.
• Ensure solutions are scalable, secure, performant, and cost effective.
• Evolve the data platform in line with business growth and emerging technologies.
• Design and implement robust data ingestion and integration pipelines from multiple source systems.
• Apply a medallion architecture (e.g. Bronze Silver Gold layers).
• Build curated, analytics ready datasets that are trusted and well documented.
• Ensure data quality, consistency, and traceability throughout the data lifecycle.
• Work closely with business Product Owners to translate prioritised outcomes into technical deliverables.
• Clarify requirements, identify dependencies, and propose realistic delivery options.
• Balance competing domain demands through transparent sequencing and planning.
• Communicate progress, risks, and trade-offs clearly to stakeholders.
• Implement and maintain data governance controls within engineering solutions.
• Support data quality monitoring, issue resolution, and continuous improvement.
• Contribute to and maintain technical documentation, data lineage, and metadata artefacts.
• Ensure compliance with data security, privacy, and regulatory requirements.

• Promote modern engineering and delivery practices across the data team.
• Introduce automation, optimisation, and improved tooling where appropriate.
• Support organisational adoption of data products through reliability and usability.

You will need strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to analyse complex data requirements and design effective solutions.
A meticulous attention to detail to ensure data accuracy and integrity.
A creative and innovative thinker, who can develop new solutions to meet evolving data challenges.
Be a strong team player with the ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams and also the ability to adapt to changing business needs and technology advancements.
A strategic mindset with the ability to align data architecture with JFS's long-term goals.

• Degree or equivalent in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.
• Knowledge of business analysis and process mapping (BPMN
  2.0 flowcharts)
• Project Management training (PRINCE2, PMP, Agile, Scrum Master etc.)
• Knowledge of data modelling (Unified Modelling Language, star schema)
• Knowledge of best-practice Data Maturity and data Quality frameworks (e.g. DAMA)
• Strong expertise in Microsoft Azure , Fabric , Microsoft 365 platform
• Fluency in one or more of the following programming languages (SQL, Python (pandas, PySpark, REST API integration), M Power Query, DAX, JavaScript)
• Proven experience as a Data Architect, Data…