Data Engineering Strategy Lead

Our Data Portfolio is experiencing sustained growth driven by significant new contract wins and demand that continues to exceed original forecasts. To maintain delivery excellence, reduce operational risk, strengthen engineering leadership, and build the capability required for future growth, we are seeking a Data Engineering Strategy Lead to shape and lead our engineering strategy for new and emerging work across the portfolio.
This role will play a key part in shaping the future direction of the Data & Intelligence Portfolio by assessing new, changing, and emerging work and defining the most effective strategic response. It will bring clarity to complex or ambiguous demand by understanding the nature of the work, identifying the right people and stakeholders to involve, and determining the technical, delivery, and leadership capabilities required for successful delivery.

The role will translate this understanding into a clear roadmap of future portfolio requirements, supporting informed decisions around capability, investment, and workforce planning.
The role sits at the intersection of business growth, workforce strategy, capability development and engineering leadership.

Hybrid working:
The places that you work from day to day will vary according to your role, your needs, and those of the business;
it will be a blend of Company offices, client sites, and your home; noting that you will be unable to work at home 100% of the
time.

If you are successfully offered this position, you will go through a series of pre-employment checks, including:

identity, nationality (single or dual) or immigration status, employment history going back 3 continuous years, and unspent
criminal record check (known as Disclosure and Barring Service)

The purpose of this role is to help the Data & Intelligence Portfolio assess, shape, and define the right strategic approach for new, changing, and emerging work. The role will bring structure to ambiguous demand by understanding what the work involves, identifying who needs to be engaged, and defining the technical, delivery, leadership, and capability skills required to deliver it successfully.

It will translate these requirements into a clear roadmap of portfolio demand, skills, investment priorities, and future capability needs, while continuing to provide strong technical leadership across data engineering, architecture, testing, analytics, operations, automation, AI-assisted engineering, Dev Ops, and cloud-first delivery. The role will also support the growth of engineering capability across permanent, contractor, graduate, apprentice, and partner talent, ensuring the portfolio has the right skills, standards, leadership, and communities in place to meet current delivery commitments and future growth.

• Identify and shape opportunities for growth, including new work, capability development, bid support and stronger use of data engineering capability across the wider Insights &
• Clarify what new work involves, who needs to be engaged, and what technical, delivery, and leadership skills are required to deliver it successfully.
• Translate future work and capability requirements into a clear roadmap of portfolio demand, skills, and investment priorities.
• Define and maintain the Data Portfolio engineering capability requirements and identify capability gaps across the portfolio.
• Support across permanent, contractor, graduate, apprentice, and partner talents.

• Provide leadership across engineering capability areas including:
• Data Integration
• Data Engineering
• Data Architecture
• Data Quality & Testing
• Data Analytics, Reporting and Visualization
• Operations & Support
• Establish standards, best practices, and engineering guardrails.
• Drive adoption of modern engineering approaches, automation, AI-assisted engineering, Dev Ops, and cloud-first delivery models.
• Promote engineering excellence, innovation, and continuous improvement across the portfolio.

• Mentor senior engineers and future technical leaders.
• Drive a culture of continuous learning and professional development.
• Support succession planning for critical engineering leadership roles.

• Act as a trusted advisor to senior portfolio and practice leadership.
• Bring the right stakeholders together early to assess emerging work, shape the right solution, and agree the skills, leadership, and capability needed.
• Influence investment…