Data Engineer

NHS; London; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job description

The NHS Counter Fraud Authority is the national body responsible for all matters relating to the prevention, detection and investigation of economic crime across the NHS. Further information about our work and annual plan for delivering this is available on our website.

As a Data Engineer you will have direct oversight and responsibility for the development implementation review and establishment of data and techniques used in the Advanced Data Analytics Portfolio (DAP). You will collaborate with project managers, data scientists, counter fraud experts, stakeholders, and senior management across the NHSCFA and our wider stakeholders. The primary responsibilities will include developing, evaluating, maintaining, and managing data pipelines, processing, preparing data suitable for analysis, and developing and maintaining data models. You will support the design of analytical services, products, and models that meet the needs of NHSCFA.

The post holder will be required to have a NPPV3.

This is a Fixed Term contract until 31st March 2026.

Potential applicants can contact Naga Balam at [e-mail] for an informal chat if you have any questions regarding the role. Interviews will be held on-line - 12.05.25. If a candidate is suitable for the role, a second face-to-face interview will be arranged.

Please note that previous applicants are not eligible to reapply.

Main duties of the job

Our new team are embarking on a piece of work to monitor data to identify and respond to patterns indicative of potential fraud. This will support our current work that reduces the likelihood of fraud occurring. We will bring in data science capabilities to be deployed in counter fraud activity and work closely with partners across health and government to further maximise the preventative impact of proactive counter fraud analysis. We will combine this with our range of counter fraud and domain expertise to maximise our impact using your knowledge, experience, and passion for your chosen field. At the core will be the development and use of appropriate analytical techniques that include advanced analytics and machine learning to tackle some of the highest areas of fraud risk to the NHS and ultimately protect public funds for patient care.

About us

We have offices based in Coventry and Newcastle. The NHSCFA values and respects the diversity of its employees and aims to recruit a workforce which reflects our diverse communities. We welcome applications irrespective of people's age, disability, gender, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation, or other personal circumstances. We have policies and procedures in place to ensure that all applicants are treated fairly and consistently at every stage of the recruitment process, including an invitation to the first stage of the selection process and consideration of reasonable adjustments for people who have a disability. If you are applying to undertake this role on a secondment basis you should have agreement to being released from your current role in principle, prior to submitting an application form. When you apply for this role, you will be redirected to our recruitment system TRAC. The NHSCFA does not hold a sponsor licence in respect of skilled worker visas and so is unable to employ candidates requiring sponsorship.

We reserve the right to close this vacancy before the advertised closing date should we receive a significant number of applications.

Job responsibilities

Develop and maintain robust, efficient, secure, and reliable data pipelines using Azure technologies including Fabric, Azure Data Factory, Synapse Analytics, Databricks and Lakehouses.

Build data pipelines that clean, transform, and present granular and aggregate data from disparate sources.

Design, build, test, automate, and maintain architectures and processing workflows for analytics and business intelligence (BI) systems which are scalable.

Plan, develop and evaluate methods and processes for gathering, extracting, transforming, and cleaning data and information.

To undertake development of the data warehouse, including overall design, technical development and documentation of the data warehouse, infrastructure and ETL solutions covering multiple sources of data, working alongside NHSCFA specialists and external data suppliers.

Please see full Job Description and Person Specification.

Person Specification

Knowledge and Experience

• Practical application expertise of managing data engineering projects and processes including data wrangling methods, models, data structures, and data formats such as JSON, XML and XSD.
• Machine learning for engineering practices, such as meta driven intelligent ETL and pipeline processes.
• Strong skills in relevant programming languages, frameworks, and platforms including SQL, Python, Spark, R etc.
• A strong track record of achievement in data engineering.
• Experience/understanding of data lifecycle management frameworks and project management methodology.
• Practical implementation of CI/CD in Azure DevOps.
• Experience in technologies relating to Data Science, for example: statistical analysis, machine learning, or natural language processing.
• Experience with relational SQL and databases.
• Experience with Azure tech stack such as Fabric, Data Factory, Synapse Analytics, Databricks and Lakehouses.
• Experience in building data engineering projects in Fabric.
• Knowledge of data warehousing and modelling concepts such as CDC/SCD.
• Ability to troubleshoot and solve numerical and technical problems.
• Extensive experience within a complex and demanding environment.
• Experience of producing/delivering management reports and presentations on data ingestion approaches/frameworks, impact, and related risks - focused programmes and portfolio work.
• Management experience relevant to the role in an NHS or other complex organisation.
• Recent and ongoing continuous professional and personal development action and activity.
• Planning, objective setting and experience of performance management that incorporates Data Engineering and Data Science.
• Knowledge of Data Protection, legislation and directions that support the provision of data for counter fraud purposes.
• Experience in project delivery, implementation, and management of data frameworks in a fast-paced, dynamic delivery enabled environment.
• Advanced knowledge of data warehouse development and implementation within a big data environment.
• Experience of NHS data products and systems.
• Knowledge of data and its control in a counter fraud setting.

Specialist Knowledge and Skills

• Advanced and demonstrable experience of the development and automation of robust data pipelines from diverse sources and data types.
• Experience in building or maintaining secure, accurate ETL processes.
• Experience of data wrangling and feature engineering within a dynamic environment, including data validation, manipulation, merging, joining and other data engineering techniques used to prepare data for analysis.
• Advanced knowledge of dissemination transformed assured data to other business users, using Fabric or similar Azure data engineering tools.
• Experience of data warehouse development, including overall design, technical development and documentation of the data warehouse, infrastructure and ETL solutions covering multiple sources of data.
• Knowledge of using techniques to ensure datasets and efficient queries are optimised, including batch processing, partitions, and indexing etc.
• Ability to build API integration to integrate various external NHS data sources and optimise code and data pipelines.
• Advanced knowledge in data security practices and the various methods which can be applied.
• Ability to prioritise tasks and make sense of conflicting demands and ensure work is delivered to tight deadlines utilising efficiently all available resources.
• Can lead, motivate, and inspire others.
• Ability to perform root cause analysis on external and internal processes and data to identify opportunities for improvement.
• Excellent analytic skills associated with working on unstructured and structured datasets.
• Ability to build processes that support data transformation, workload management, data structures, dependency and metadata.
• Knowledge of best practices and IT operations in an always-up, always-available service.
• Process oriented with great documentation skills.
• Knowledge of the wider NHS environment including the data and technology landscape.
• Knowledge and experience of Artificial Intelligence, including designing and implementing in the workplace.

Qualifications

• Master's degree, in relevant subject or equivalent experience/learning developed in a similar role (e.g., Data Engineering, Data Science, Computer Science, Information Technology, or related discipline). For the purposes of this job description equivalent experience would be management and technical experience in a similar sized and complex organisation.

Communication Skills

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to present and interpret complex systems, data structures and results to technical and non-technical experts using methods such as dynamic tools, written and visual.
• Must be able to handle highly complex, sensitive, or contentious information, negotiate challenging issues with senior stakeholders, and effectively present complex and sensitive information to influential groups.
• Effectively communicate and articulate complex transformation/Data quality checks to stakeholders at all management levels, addressing challenges to results with justification, clarity, and precision.
• Politically astute with knowledge of national and regional decision making and influencing bodies.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.