Senior Data Engineer
Permanent position
Home-based (Hybrid working)
The Role:
The purpose of the role is to provide senior technical leadership and hands on delivery of the James Fisher & Sons (“JFS”) data platform and data products. The Senior Data Engineer is accountable for designing, building, and maintaining scalable, secure, and high-quality data solutions that support operational and strategic decision making across the business.
Operating within the Data Target Operating Model (TOM), the role acts as the technical authority for data engineering practices, translates business priorities into deliverable technical solutions, and guides a small team of Data Engineers to consistently deliver trusted, high value data products.
The Senior Data Engineer works closely with business embedded Product Owners, enabling clear prioritisation, pragmatic solution design, and sustainable delivery while ensuring the long-term integrity of the data platform.
Key Duties and responsibilities:
- Act as the senior technical authority for data engineering across the organisation.
- Define and enforce engineering standards, patterns, and best practices.
- Own key technical decisions and manage technical debt pragmatically.
- Manage, mentor and guide Data Engineers, supporting capability development and consistency.
- Design, build, and maintain an integrated data platform and lakehouse architecture that meets business needs.
- Develop and maintain logical and physical data models optimised for analytics and reporting.
- Ensure solutions are scalable, secure, performant, and cost effective.
- Evolve the data platform in line with business growth and emerging technologies.
- Design and implement robust data ingestion and integration pipelines from multiple source systems.
- Apply a medallion architecture (e.g. Bronze Silver Gold layers).
- Build curated, analytics ready datasets that are trusted and well documented.
- Ensure data quality, consistency, and traceability throughout the data lifecycle.
- Work closely with business Product Owners to translate prioritised outcomes into technical deliverables.
- Clarify requirements, identify dependencies, and propose realistic delivery options.
- Balance competing domain demands through transparent sequencing and planning.
- Communicate progress, risks, and trade-offs clearly to stakeholders.
- Implement and maintain data governance controls within engineering solutions.
- Support data quality monitoring, issue resolution, and continuous improvement.
- Contribute to and maintain technical documentation, data lineage, and metadata artefacts.
- Ensure compliance with data security, privacy, and regulatory requirements.
Continuous Improvement:
Promote modern engineering and delivery practices across the data team.
Introduce automation, optimisation, and improved tooling where appropriate.
Support organisational adoption of data products through reliability and usability.
What we’re looking for:
You will need strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to analyse complex data requirements and design effective solutions.
A meticulous attention to detail to ensure data accuracy and integrity.
A creative and innovative thinker, who can develop new solutions to meet evolving data challenges.
Be a strong team player with the ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams and also the ability to adapt to changing business needs and technology advancements.
A strategic mindset with the ability to align data architecture with JFS's long-term goals.
Key skills, knowledge and experience:
- Degree or equivalent in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.
- Knowledge of business analysis and process mapping (BPMN2.0 flowcharts)
- Project Management training (PRINCE2, PMP, Agile, Scrum Master etc.)
- Knowledge of data modelling (Unified Modelling Language, star schema)
- Knowledge of best-practice Data Maturity and Data Quality frameworks (e.g. DAMA)
- Strong expertise in Microsoft Azure, Fabric, Microsoft 365 platform
- Fluency in one or more of the following programming languages (SQL, Python (pandas, PySpark, REST API integration), M Power Query, DAX, JavaScript)
- Proven experience as a Data Architect, Data Engineer, or similar role.
- Extensive experience with database management systems, data modelling, data integration and data cleansing
- Mandatory: Proficiency in SQL, Power BI, Python pandas, Unified Modelling Language, BPMN2.0 Process Mapping, Microsoft Visio or similar diagramming tools
- Highly desirable: Microsoft Fabric, Power Query, Power Automate, Python AI libraries and techniques (e.g. sci-kit Learn, Transformers, Vector Databases, Retrieval Augmented Generation, Prompt Engineering)
- Experience with data warehousing, ETL processes, and data governance frameworks.
- Experience in Organisational Change Management
- Although this role is remote working, it will be based in the UK therefore, applicants will need to have the right to reside and work in the UK to be eligible.
Why join us?
Competitive benefits tailored to the division.
Opportunities for career growth and visibility across the organisation.
A supportive, inclusive culture that values your ideas and contributions.
Work that truly makes a difference in safety, innovation, and global capability.
About Us:
James Fisher is a global engineering services company with over 50 years of experience delivering complex offshore energy projects in some of the world’s most challenging environments. We operate across Energy, Defence, and Maritime Transport, leveraging cutting-edge technology and deep expertise to support the full lifecycle of our customers’ assets.
Visit our website at: www.james-fisher.com
If this sounds like the ideal next step in your career, then click ‘apply’ now!
Due to the volume of applications, we receive for our vacancies, on occasion applications may close before the deadline, so please apply early to avoid disappointment.
James Fisher and Sons are committed to taking positive action on diversity and strongly encourage applications for candidates from all backgrounds. We are proud to be a Disability Confident employer and recognise that our success depends on our talented and diverse workforce.
