Senior Data Engineer and Data Manager

Job summary

We’re responsible for Land Transaction Tax, Landfill Disposals Tax and the introduction of the Visitor Levy in Wales. Our work raises revenue to support public services, like the NHS and schools, in communities across Wales. But that’s not all, we're also involved with and support future tax design for Wales.

Join a place with purpose
You’ll join a team of 100+ talented people from across 14 different professions. Our culture is best described as innovative, collaborative and kind. By working together, we’ll deliver a fair tax system for Wales.

Our people
You’ll be working with people from a wide range of backgrounds and experience. From Operations, Policy, Digital and Data, HR, Communications to Finance – there’s a place for you in our friendly team.

You’ll be our greatest asset

You’ll be joining an inclusive organisation and be part of a team where you can thrive, be rewarded and heard.

We’re recognised as one of the top organisations for people engagement in the Civil Service People Survey. Inclusion and fairness are one of our strongest areas, as well as pay and benefits – our People Survey results say it all!

We’re also recognised for being innovative and a digital, ‘cloud-based’ organisation that supports hybrid and flexible working enabling a great work-life balance.

More about working for us, our roles and our Corporate Plan 2025 - 2028 .

Job description

This post provides the opportunity to work in a fast-moving area of work, innovatively using data to contribute directly to effective and fair management of devolved taxes in Wales.

The post is suited to an experienced data professional who understands the importance of delivering a coherent data landscape, with clear lines of data mastery, across the services that WRA uses and offers. That person will support and enable staff across the WRA to make the most of our data both operationally and analytically. Crucially they will ensure data and software dependencies are maintained and simplified as our services develop.

"This is chance to work in an organisation that uses data extensively to directly inform its work. As a key part of the data team, you will be supporting the organisation in that evidence based decision-making and working with colleagues who value that contribution. You'll be supported by friendly colleagues from the immediate team as well as other parts of the WRA, but also have the autonomy to make decisions relevant to your role."

Adam Al-Nuaimi, Head of Data Analysis

Person specification

Data engineering: extraction, loading, transformation and management

• Acquisition of data from internal and external WRA systems and third parties into the WRA’s data analysis environment
• Development of pipelines and automated processes to support data integrations and flows at low cost
• Maintenance and development of the data structures to store these data where required
• Ongoing data management including a level of preliminary analysis to present simplified views and aggregations of the data for use by the analysts
• Drafting and maintenance of documentation for the WRA data environment, including policies covering accurate data storage, appropriate data access and high levels of data security/confidentiality, user guides and key technical information
• Management of access permissions to the data in the data environment for user groups and by related systems
• Upkeep of software in the data analysis environment

Data engineering: integration between services

• Management of test and live versions of the WRA data architecture including development of new code and infrastructure in test, and deployment from test to live
• Development and management of APIs sharing data to and from the data environment to other internal (and possibly external in future) services in the WRA, in particular data supporting a single view of each WRA customer
• Advocating for clear lines of data mastery, especially for datasets flowing into and out of the data environment
• Being a point of contact for wider organisation colleagues and third-party support services for understanding the data integrations currently in use
• Providing a governance gateway regarding data integrations, including:
• Working closely with the Business Solutions Manager, business analysts, solutions architects, internal developers, testers and support contractors within the WRA change process to ensure that data considerations, data flows and data mastery is considered appropriately in change projects
• Challenging robustly and escalating where necessary in ensuring future integration work maintains coherence, versioning and retention/disposal of data, and keeps costs low
• Helping to ensure the continuity of existing operations
• Ownership and maintenance of documentation pertaining to the above
• Keeping abreast of developments in software as a service offerings, exploiting opportunities for simpler and better data integrations
• Supporting use of data including replication from all key systems into the WRA data environment for more detailed analysis

Skills development and sharing

• Self-driven development in technical skills in areas listed in section below
• Provision of support to other analysts and wider staff in the use of these tools
• Able to explain the data integrations, data flows and the importance of the mastery of the data to non-technical colleagues

Candidate information sessions

If this seems like a role you’d be interested in, join us for our virtual Candidate Information Sessions. You’ll meet the Line Manager, get an overview of the role as well a feeling for what it’s like to work at the WRA. We’ll also talk through our benefits and provide helpful tips for your application with us. Please register for one of the sessions below:

20th August 12.30pm - 13.00pm - Register here: https://SeniorDataEngineerandDataManager.eventbrite.co.uk

20th August 16.00pm - 16.30pm - Register here: https://SeniorDataEngineerandDataManager4pm.eventbrite.co.uk

Languages

We’ve undertaken an objective assessment of the Welsh language skills needed to undertake the duties of this role. For this role:

Welsh language skills - Welsh skills are not essential. This means that you do not need Welsh language skills to undertake this role and these skills won’t be assessed during the recruitment process. However, we actively encourage all staff to learn, or improve their Welsh language skills and offer a range of opportunities to suit everyone.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £47,675, Welsh Revenue Authority contributes £13,811 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (open