Description
At Scottish Funding Council, we’re embarking on an exciting digital transformation to redefine how we use data to drive innovation and deliver exceptional value to our customers. Central to this journey is the creation of the Azure-based data ecosystem, enabling us to unlock the full potential of our data through transformative and intelligent solutions. Our Data Engineering team plays a pivotal role in this mission. We manage the entire data lifecycle, from integrating diverse data sources and optimizing storage and processing pipelines to delivering actionable insights, while ensuring compliance with company standards and data protection regulations.
As a Senior Data Engineer, you will be a technical leader within this dynamic team, driving innovation and engineering excellence. You’ll work closely with teams across the organisation, including Analytics and Cloud Engineering, to cultivate a data-driven culture and lead initiatives that turn data into a powerful tool for transformation.
This role offers a unique opportunity to shape the future of post-16 education in Scotland. By delivering innovative, data-driven solutions, you will enable institutions, and policymakers to make informed decisions, enhance learning outcomes, and create opportunities that empower students to thrive in an increasingly data-centric world.
At Scottish Funding Council, we’re embarking on an exciting digital transformation to redefine how we use data to drive innovation and deliver exceptional value to our customers. Central to this journey is the creation of the Azure-based data ecosystem, enabling us to unlock the full potential of our data through transformative and intelligent solutions.
Our Data Engineering team plays a pivotal role in this mission. We manage the entire data lifecycle, from integrating diverse data sources and optimizing storage and processing pipelines to delivering actionable insights, while ensuring compliance with company standards and data protection regulations. As a Senior Data Engineer, you will be a technical leader within this dynamic team, driving innovation and engineering excellence. You’ll work closely with teams across the organisation, including Analytics and Cloud Engineering, to cultivate a data-driven culture and lead initiatives that turn data into a powerful tool for transformation.
This role offers a unique opportunity to shape the future of post-16 education in Scotland. By delivering innovative, data-driven solutions, you will enable institutions, and policymakers to make informed decisions, enhance learning outcomes, and create opportunities that empower students to thrive in an increasingly data-centric world.
We expect that this role will end in February 2027.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the delivery of data products and services, leading their design and providing clear visibility of delivery progress and risks to support analytics, reporting and decision making.
- Build and maintain data pipelines and the underlying data platform, ensuring they are production ready, reliable and efficient.
- Apply and contribute to data architecture and engineering standards and best practices, improving consistency and quality across the team.
- Ensure data quality, governance, security, and regulatory requirements are addressed as part of solution design, delivery, and support.
- Work with stakeholders to understand requirements and turn them into practical data solutions.
- Support the development of others through mentoring, peer reviews, knowledge sharing, and support.
- Contribute to the ongoing improvement of the data platform and overall data maturity, identifying opportunities to improve how data is used across the organisation and contributing to roadmaps.
Skills, Knowledge and Expertise
It is important through your CV / Cover Letter that you give evidence of proven experience of each of the following essential criteria:
Essential
- Proven track record of designing, developing and delivering enterprise-scale data platforms and data products in a cloud environment (ideally Microsoft Azure).
- Ability to build and support reliable and scalable data products, with an understanding of performance and maintainability.
- Advanced proficiency in SQL and modern data processing frameworks, coupled with strong programming skills in at least one language (Python preferred).
- Expertise applying data modelling and architecture approaches, including dimensional modelling, data warehousing patterns.
- Hands on experience working with CI/CD and DevOps practices for data engineering, including version control, automated testing and deployment pipelines to support continuous delivery.
- Understanding and application of data governance principles, including data quality, lineage, meta data and security controls.
- Experience delivering integration or migration initiatives, particularly involving legacy systems and modern data platforms.
- Strong analytical capability, including data profiling, source system analysis supporting data solution design and insights.
- Experience supporting or mentoring data engineers, including line management or informal coaching, promoting data engineering best practice and contributing to standards.
- Demonstrated ownership of technical delivery of data solutions across the lifecycle, leading implementation from discovery, requirements gathering, through to production.
- Strong stakeholder communication and engagement skills, including the ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical audiences.
Desirable
- Degree level education (SCQF level 9) or equivalent experience, ideally in a technical field such as Computer Science, Mathematics or Physics.
- Significant exposure to Azure utilising some of the following: Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure SQL, Azure Data Factory, Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Lake, Azure DevOps and PowerBI.
- Azure Data Engineer Associate certification or higher OR Azure AI Engineer Associate certification or higher.
Terms and Benefits
· Normal full-time hours of work are 35 per week. We will consider flexible working arrangements. A flexi-time system is in operation.
· Annual leave entitlement of 30 days pro-rata, plus public and privilege holiday entitlement of 13 days pro-rata.
· A flexible approach to hybrid working, giving you flexibility to work from home anywhere in the UK for some of the time while also maintaining regular in-person contact with colleagues.
· Annual pay review: approved within the framework of the Scottish Government’s Public Sector Pay Policy and negotiated with our recognised trade union, Unite. Salaries are reviewed annually in April for employees who commence employment prior to 1 October in the preceding year.
· Eligibility to join the Civil Service Pension Scheme. With its low member contribution rates and generous employer contributions, this gives you a secure, inflation-proof pension for life with no investment uncertainty. Details of contribution rates together with further details of the pension benefits are available on the Civil Service Pensions website. There is also the option of a Partnership pension account.
· Support for continuous professional development: as a part of SFC, we are dedicated to providing comprehensive support for continuous learning and professional development. Civil Service-Learning curriculum has thoughtfully designed to cater to various learning preferences, allowing employees to engage in a manner that best suits their needs. All our educational resources are conveniently accessible through the CSL website.
· Support for health and wellbeing, including generous occupational sick pay, free access to confidential advice and support through our 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme, Special Leave (paid and unpaid), a contribution to learning outside work through our Lifelong Learning Fund, free winter flu vaccination, and access to occupational health support.
· We provide support to SFC employees with Volunteering Days.
· Support for travel to and from work, including a salary sacrifice cycle loan scheme, cycle storage and shower facilities, an interest-free loan for bus or rail season tickets and free office car parking for employees on a first-come basis.
Although most salaried roles are advertised as full time positions (35 hours a week), we are happy to discuss part-time or compressed hours to suit a candidates circumstances. We also operate a flexible working scheme to work around a candidate’s other commitments such as caring responsibilities.
We will consider secondment applications for most salaried fixed-term or temporary positions and in many cases also for salaried permanent positions. If you are interested in applying on a secondment basis and this option is not explicitly mentioned in the job advert, please contact recruitment@sfc.ac.uk for further information.
This role has been identified and will be funded by The Scottish Government to support the smooth transition of the Tertiary Education and Training (TET) Bill. This will enable SFC to continue delivering key priorities including the smooth transfer of the funding, development and delivery of national training programmes, including apprenticeships, from Skills Development Scotland (SDS) to the Scottish Funding Council (SFC).
We are the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council, more commonly known as the Scottish Funding Council (SFC).
We are Scotland’s tertiary education and research authority and our purpose is to sustain a world-leading system of tertiary education, research and innovation that enables students to flourish, changes lives for the better, and supports social, economic and environmental wellbeing and prosperity.
We do this by investing around £2 billion of public money to deliver:
- Tertiary learning and teaching.
- Skills and apprenticeships.
- Student support and participation.
- Research, innovation and knowledge exchange.
- Data collection and dissemination.
- National quality assurance and enhancement processes.
- Capital and digital infrastructure for the sector.
- Strategic change, responsive provision and research priorities.
As a non-departmental public body established by the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act 2005, we are directly accountable to Scottish Government Ministers and the Scottish Parliament. We work across many government portfolios and are sponsored by the Lifelong Learning Directorate.
We hold colleges, universities and other funded bodies to account for their delivery of required outcomes. We are also the statistical authority for colleges, and work closely with the UK-wide Higher Education Statistical Authority (HESA), to provide data and statistics for government, decision-makers, and the wider public.
We work in partnership with a wide range of partners and bodies, including those we fund, across all aspects of our remit.
General information for applicants for SFC roles
You must already be eligible to work in the UK to apply for these roles. SFC do not hold a UK Visa & Immigration (UKVI) Skills Worker License and are unable to sponsor any individuals for Skilled Worker Sponsorship.
We are pleased to support applications from everyone regardless of age, disability, race and ethnicity, socio-economic background, gender, sexual orientation, sex, gender reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy or maternity, religion or belief, as well as those who have skills in Scottish Gaelic or British Sign Language, who have the right skills for the job.
We are proud to be a Disability Confident employer and actively encourage interviews through the scheme.
Further information about SFC is available on our website Scottish Funding Council home page (sfc.ac.uk). Additional information about our recruitment process can be found at Recruitment FAQs | Scottish Funding Council Careers (sfc.ac.uk).
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