Application Engineer - BI

Slaughter and May; United Kingdom; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Slaughter and May is seeking an Application Engineer for the Business Systems team to strengthen our BI reporting and data platform. You will own and optimise applications using Power BI/Fabric, Azure Data Factory and the Enterprise Data Warehouse, translating complex data concepts for diverse stakeholders.

You will partner with business users, technology colleagues and vendors to ensure reliability, security and scalability while driving operational efficiency and data insights across the firm.

Qualifications

• Expert SQL skills with advanced SQL objects (procedures, functions, XML/JSON).
• Strong Data Warehouse knowledge (Kimball, Inmon).
• Advanced DAX and semantic modelling skills.
• Power BI expertise including paginated reports.

Responsibilities

• Act as technical product owner for business applications, aligning with roadmap and user needs.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to gather requirements and translate into changes.
• Lead design, development, testing and optimisation of applications; participate in agile ceremonies.
• Manage configuration, deployment and ongoing support of the portfolio; troubleshoot and escalate issues.
• Maintain security, governance and documentation; monitor usage and performance.

Skills

SQL

DAX

Power BI

Data Warehousing

Azure Data Factory

Stakeholder engagement

Agile delivery

DevOps / CI-CD

Team collaboration

REST / OData integrations

Tools

Tabular Editor

DAX Studio

ALM Toolkit

Job description

We are looking for a talented and adaptable Application Engineer to join our Business Systems team. You will bring expertise for the firm’s BI Reporting and data platform, which includes the Enterprise Data Warehouse, Microsoft Power BI/Fabric and Microsoft Azure Data Factory.

You will be comfortable talking to a range of people and translating technical ideas for non-technical audiences. You will work closely with business users, technology colleagues and third-party vendors to ensure your portfolio of applications remains reliable, scalable, secure and aligned to the firm's evolving needs. This will require strong troubleshooting skills and a solid understanding of system integrations, data structures and flows, application architecture and governance. This is an excellent opportunity to help shape and improve our technology landscape, enhance operational efficiency, and drive data insights.

We are a close-knit and supportive team of 15 people, dedicated to sharing knowledge and cross-skilling to support and improve the diverse set of business-critical applications we look after. We are looking for someone with the flexibility and appetite to learn and pick up new skills and technologies as well as the enthusiasm to utilise their skill set to aid delivery across the entire Application Engineering team.

Key responsibilities

The key responsibilities of this role are set out below and there may be others which are not listed. You may be required on occasion to work outside our normal working hours of 9:30am to 5:30pm.

Technical Product Ownership

• Serve as the technical product owner for assigned business applications, managing their technical direction and ensuring alignment with the Technology department’s roadmap, business strategy and user needs.
• Stay informed of product updates, upgrades and roadmap developments and manage their implementation.
• Maintain and prioritise the product backlog, including new features, upgrades, maintenance tasks, defect resolution and security updates.
• Serve as a subject matter expert (SME) for your portfolio, promoting optimal use of the applications and proactively identifying opportunities for business improvement.
• Engage regularly with application stakeholders and users to ensure they are informed of progress and change, and to monitor and improve user experience.

Design and Development

• Collaborate with stakeholders to gather requirements and translate them into practical application changes or enhancements.
• Work with internal and external teams to securely design, develop, test and optimise enhancements to your assigned applications.
• Participate in or lead agile ceremonies such as sprint planning, backlog refinement and retrospectives.

Application Management and Support

• Manage the configuration, deployment and ongoing support of your portfolio of applications.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex technical issues, escalating to vendors where necessary.
• Act as the primary liaison between internal users, procurement, support teams and vendors for your portfolio.
• Manage vendor relationships, including coordinating support cases, overseeing service levels, and negotiating enhancements or customisations.
• Monitor usage and performance, proactively addressing issues and identifying opportunities for improvement.
• Maintain thorough documentation relating to change control, configuration, processes and procedures.

Cybersecurity and Risk

• Maintain best practice security policies and procedures for the applications, any data they handle or store and their integrations, complying with internal and external security standards.
• Identify and manage risks and vulnerabilities in your portfolio and in its roadmap and proactively support their mitigation.
• Participate in audits, risk assessments and business continuity planning as it relates to your application portfolio.

Candidate profile

Candidates for this position must have:

• Expert SQL skills with an excellent knowledge of SQL objects, including stored procedures, functions, XML and JSON data types.
• Strong knowledge of Data Warehouse methodologies including Kimball and Inmon.
• Strong DAX skills with knowledge of semantic modelling.
• Strong knowledge of Power BI and paginated report writing.
• Experience of building integrations using Azure Data Factory including REST and OData connections.
• Excellent stakeholder engagement, communication and documentation skills, with the ability to convey technical concepts clearly to non-technical audiences.
• A collaborative approach and a genuine enjoyment of working as part of a close-knit team.
• Adaptability and a willingness to learn new skills and ways of working and to take on additional responsibilities as the team's needs evolve.
• Knowledge of Tabular Editor, DAX Studio, ALM Toolkit.
• Experience of DevOps, CI/CD and deployment pipelines.
• Experience in the legal sector or a similar highly regulated environment.
• Familiarity with legal sector compliance and IT security standards (e.g. GDPR, ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials Plus).
• Exposure to agile or iterative delivery methodologies.

We are committed to ensuring that our recruitment processes are barrier-free and as inclusive as possible for everyone. This includes making adjustments for people who have a disability or long-term condition. If you have any questions or require any adjustments to be made to one or both of the application or interview processes, please contact the Recruitment Team.

We are a Disability Confident Committed employer and will offer an interview to applicants with a disability or long-term condition who best meet the minimum or essential criteria for our Business Services roles. You are disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a 'substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. For more information about the Disability Confident scheme, please see the government website here.

We welcome applications irrespective of race, colour, ethnic or national origin, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion, belief or marital status.