Senior Data Engineer

Data Engineer

Cambridge Spark is an AI and data science apprenticeship provider, working with clients including the BBC, NHS, Virgin Atlantic, and GSK. Our EDUKATE.AI platform sits at the centre of everything we deliver, and the data estate that underpins it is growing in scope and complexity.

Together with our current data engineer, you will take joint ownership of our data infrastructure and shape the direction of our data landscape: how it is governed, how it is structured, and how the business uses it. That last part matters as much as the infrastructure itself.

You will work closely with our product engineers on the decisions that affect the application database, and directly with business stakeholders to make sure the data we expose is the right data: not just the most convenient. This is a hands-on role, with senior judgment: knowing when to fix, when to redesign, and when to push back.

Key responsibilities:

• Own the data estate. Our stack is Postgres, GCP, BigQuery, and Looker. You keep things running reliably today, but you are also the person who decides and drives any changes needed to our architecture.
• Set the standard for how we work with data. You will establish the patterns, conventions, and governance practices that others build on. That includes how data is classified, how access is controlled, and how requests from the business are evaluated. Our policies are in place, and we need to implement them.
• Work with product engineers as a peer. Schema decisions in the application database have downstream consequences for everything else. You engage with those conversations early, have opinions about what belongs where, and help build data quality into the source.
• Change how the business thinks about data. When someone says "I want to see this dataset," your job is not to grant or refuse the request. It is to understand what they are actually trying to solve and find the right path to insight. Over time, you shift the culture: fewer "just add a field" requests, more conversations that start with the business problem.
• Hold the line on data governance. Cambridge Spark handles sensitive learner and employer data in a regulated environment. You treat compliant data handling as a point of professional pride, enforce least-privilege access as a matter of course, and push back constructively when a proposed approach would expose more than it should.
• Balance the immediate and the strategic. You can triage what is urgent, make pragmatic fixes, and still keep the longer-term design coherent. Neither horizon gets sacrificed for the other.

Candidate specification:

Technical

Essential

• Postgres: schema design, query optimisation, indexing, and migrations in production
• GCP: hands-on experience with core services: Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage, IAM, networking
• BigQuery: data warehousing and mirroring pipelines; cost management and performance tuning
• Looker or equivalent BI tooling: able to own a dashboard estate end-to-end, including coaching others to use it well
• Data modelling: strong instinct for when to aggregate, when to denormalise, and when not to expose raw data
• Data governance: classification frameworks, access controls, audit logging, data lineage; in practice, not just in theory

Desirable

• Familiarity with UK GDPR and DPA 2018, particularly in a regulated or learner-facing context
• Experience with dbt, Airflow, or comparable pipeline tooling
• Experience designing a data contract between an application engineering team and an analytics layer
• Background in edtech or another regulated sector

Ways of Working

• Judgment, not just experience. You know when the right answer is "fix the pipeline" and when it is "the pipeline is fine, the data model is wrong." You push back on the path of least resistance when it matters.
• A product-led style. You're not purely analytics or BI, but close enough to software engineers to understand how application decisions affect data quality downstream, and confident enough to influence those decisions.
• Working directly with business stakeholders. You help people with questions get to better ones.
• Principled attitude to sensitive data. You will say "we should not be exposing this" when it's right, and you hold that line while still being constructive and helpful to the business.
• Ownership without prompting. When something is wrong, you notice, understand what it means, and do something about it. You leave things better than you found them.

What This Role Is Not

• A pure analytics or BI role. Looker is part of the picture, but the core remit is the data estate and governance layer beneath it.
• A hands-off architecture role. The seniority here is about better decisions, not less implementation. You will be in the code and the schemas.
• A role for someone who sees compliance as someone else's problem. The regulated nature of what we do means data governance is a first-class concern from day one.

Why This Role

• The data landscape is good but needs work; you have the mandate to fix this properly.
• Direct access to and influence with senior leadership
• A stable, values-driven business with a social impact mission in education and skills
• The autonomy to do the role properly, not just execute a predetermined roadmap

Company benefits:

• Pension with 4% matched contributions, opportunity to opt into salary sacrifice scheme
• 25 days holiday + Flexi bank holidays + 1 day off on your birthday
• A day for volunteering
• Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Leave
• Health & Wellbeing allowance of up to £30 per month
• Annual Summer and Xmas events
• Company socials including everything from Cambridge College formals, pub nights to team building events
• CPD Allowance alongside quarterly reflections to ring fence time for development and growth
• Private medical insurance and cash plan
• Holiday buy back scheme (up to 10 days p/a)
• Employee Assistance Programme with a dedicated company counsellor