Lead Data Engineer

Job summary

If you’re interested in making a difference to people’s lives, the Treasury can offer you an exciting opportunity to influence decision making that affects the whole of the UK. Working at the heart of government, we collaborate across government to promote responsible public spending and drive strong and sustainable economic growth.

Our work ranges from protecting customers through the regulation of the financial sector, helping to reduce carbon emissions and creating a greener economy, to promoting British trade around the world and supporting people across the country on jobs, growth and more.

We are part of the Darlington Economic Campus, a cross-government hub bringing people together to tackle key national issues while working closer to the communities we serve.

Job description

As a lead data engineer, you will work on a variety of data engineering projects, maintaining and developing them in response to user feedback. These products are used by a wide variety of HMT staff: improving them will increase productivity across the department. You will also work in a team of data professionals, supporting HMT through a wide portfolio of projects, and hold relationships with customers within HMT and beyond.

Key accountabilities of this role include:

1. You will be acquiring data sets from multiple sources at varying levels of maturity. You will have a demonstrable understanding of how to expose data from systems (e.g. from APIs), link data from multiple systems, and deliver streaming services. You will collaborate with others to identify and plan these services, and to review specifications.
2. You will maintain and develop data products used internally and in line with HMT’s data strategy. You will leverage your expertise in Python and cloud systems to achieve this. You will ensure the products run reliably and react to any issues rapidly.
3. You can produce data models and understand where to use different types of data models. You have experience of a wide range of data engineering tools. You understand industry-recognised data-modelling patterns, how to establish and use agreed standards and tools, design, code, and test programs and scripts for data engineering. You can develop resilient, scalable, and future-proof services for to meet user needs.
4. You will actively scope and carry out other projects including web app development and data engineering. You will explore opportunities to work innovatively, recognising, identifying and exploiting opportunities to ensure efficient and effective performance of the organisation, and to support and enable that you will influence the data architecture in place. You can explore new ways of conducting business and organisational processes.
5. You will promote best practice in data engineering including acquisition, storage and sharing of data for the benefit of modelling and policy development, working with the Hub to provide overall technical leadership and development opportunities across HMT in data and data science.
6. You will contribute to the growth of the Data Hub through sharing work, pair programming, contributing process ideas.

Essential criteria:

- Strong experience using Python for data engineering and web app development
- Expertise in SQL
- Considerable experience at least one major Cloud provider (Azure is preferred, however Google Cloud or AWS are acceptable)
- Experience successfully implementing a product and managing customer relationships, acting on feedback and other good product management practices

Desirable criteria:

- Experience making pipelines and data warehousing with Microsoft Fabric
- Experience making apps with Plotly Dash, Streamlit and/or Chainlit
- Experience using LLM and Embedding APIs, with a strong understanding of how both work

Candidate Drop-In Session

The hiring manager will be running a candidate drop-in session to give you greater insight about the role and HM Treasury and ask any questions you might have.

If you would like to join us, use the link below to join the call at the right time.

Date & time: Wednesday 29th July and 5th August, 4-5pm.

Join the meeting: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/399558196117029?p=inFy0a53sFBYqONH9J

Meeting ID: 399 558 196 117 029
Passcode: Dn69LE6P

If you would like to speak to the hiring manager informally prior to the closing date, please contact Molly Adamat at [email removed]

You may also be interested in a similar role within our department - Lead Software Developer. For further details, please see the advert at Lead Software Developer - Civil Service Jobs - GOV.UK

Visa sponsorship is not available for either of these roles.

Person specification

Application Stage

Application Form

Applications should consist of a CV including your employment history, and a 1000-word personal statement setting out how you meet the shortlisting criteria below. Your CV and employment history won’t be scored. It’s used to give context to your application and support discussions at interview.

The panel will review applications and invite those that best demonstrate evidence of the shortlisting criteria for interview. Please keep this in mind when writing your application.

Please note that only applications submitted through Civil Service Jobs will be accepted.

Essential criteria (application stage)

1. Proven experience designing and building robust back‑end systems, such as data pipelines, services or orchestration layers, that are scalable, secure and maintainable.
2. Demonstrable experience applying technical governance and controls to complex systems, including areas such as logging, monitoring, auditability, access management and safe interaction with data.
3. Strong ability to translate organisational or user needs into effective technical solutions, working collaboratively with colleagues from non‑technical backgrounds such as policy, analytical or operational teams.
4. Ability to provide credible technical leadership and advice, including explaining complex concepts clearly, promoting good engineering practice, and supporting others to adopt solutions safely and confidently.

Interview Stage

If you are successful at the application stage, you will be invited to interview where you will be assessed against the following criteria:

Behaviours:

• Changing and Improving
• Managing a Quality Service
• Working Together
• Experience

Interview Task / Presentation

Prior to your interview, we will contact you about a task / presentation that the panel would like you to deliver as part of the assessment. Further details will be communicated to you nearer the time.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Changing and Im