Senior Data Engineer

Cambridge University Press & Assessment; United Kingdom; Hybrid; GBP 54,000 - 74,000; Full time

Job description

• Job Title: Senior Data Engineer
• Salary: £54,600 - £73,650
• Location: Cambridge, Hybrid (2-3 days per week in the office)
• Contract: Full time (35 hours per week), Permanent

Are you a highly experienced data engineer with a track record of delivering scalable, production-grade data pipelines? Do you thrive on optimising data workflows to power AI-driven assessment solutions and learning innovations? Are you ready to take ownership of architecture, governance and technical leadership? If so, we want to hear from you!

We are Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a world-leading academic publisher and assessment organisation and a proud part of the University of Cambridge. Our Applied AI team is looking for a talented Senior Data Engineer to help develop the data infrastructure that powers cutting-edge educational solutions.

In this role, you will be instrumental in building and maintaining the data infrastructure that supports machine learning models and analytics. Your expertise will help drive efficiency, scalability, and innovation in AI-enhanced education.

About the role

As a Senior Data Engineer, you will:

• Lead a team of data engineers to develop high-performance data pipelines and architectures
• Establish and enforce data governance and best practices
• Architect and optimise cloud-based data storage and compute solutions
• Evaluate and introduce new data technologies and frameworks for continuous improvement
• Develop and maintain monitoring solutions to ensure system performance and reliability
• Drive standardisation of data engineering best practices across Applied AI
• Collaborate with data scientists and ML engineers to ensure data pipelines align with AI/ML model needs

About you

You are a confident technical leader, comfortable balancing architecture, delivery and people development. You are driven by engineering excellence and enjoy solving data challenges at scale.

Essential Qualifications & Skills:

• A degree in computing, engineering, science or social science with a strong analytical focus
• Minimum 5 years of experience in a data engineering role, including at least 2 years in a senior or lead capacity
• Advanced proficiency in SQL, Python and shell scripting, including writing and maintaining robust, testable, production-grade code
• Extensive experience in designing and managing large-scale data architectures
• Substantial expertise in cloud computing and distributed systems
• Extensive experience in troubleshooting and optimising data pipelines
• Experience in defining and applying data governance and security policies
• The ability to plan and develop future capabilities, including
  • design data pipelines for reliable and high-quality data delivery
  • estimate time, cost and outcomes of different solutions
  • apply effective risk management to solutions to ensure prompt delivery
  • develop quality monitoring solutions
• Evidence of continuous technical learning and staying abreast of industry trends
• Experience in working effectively in an Agile environment, with strong collaboration and communication skills.

Desirable:

• A postgraduate degree in computing, engineering or science
• Experience managing Infrastructure as Code (IaC), ideally using AWS-native tools (CloudFormation, CDK, or Terraform targeting AWS)
• Experience with orchestration tools, such as Apache Airflow, Prefect, Dagster
• Substantial experience with data modelling, schema design and data warehouse architecture
• Experience in leading or mentoring engineering teams
• Familiarity with MLOps or supporting ML lifecycle pipelines
• Contributions to open-source projects or technical writing/blogs

If you would like to know more about this opportunity and what will make you successful, please see the full job description attached to the bottom of this vacancy on our careers site.

Rewards and benefits

We will support you to be at your best in work and to live well outside of it. In addition to competitive salaries, we offer a world-class, flexible rewards package, featuring family-friendly and planet-friendly benefits including:

• 28 days annual leave plus bank holidays
• Private medical and Permanent Health Insurance
• Discretionary annual bonus
• Group personal pension scheme
• Life assurance up to 4 x annual salary
• Green travel schemes

We are a hybrid working organisation, and we offer a range of flexible working options from day one. We expect most hybrid-working colleagues to spend 40-60% of their time at their dedicated office or location. We will also consider other work arrangements if you wish to work more flexibly or require adjustments due to a disability.

Ready to pursue your potential? Apply now.

We review applications on an ongoing basis, with a closing date for all applications being 29th April, although we may close it earlier if suitable candidates are identified. Interviews are scheduled to take place on weeks commencing shortly after it closes.

Please note that successful applicants will be subject to satisfactory background checks including DBS due to working in a regulated industry.

Cambridge University Press & Assessment is an approved UK employer for the sponsorship of eligible roles and applicants under the Skilled Worker visa route. Please refer to the gov.uk website for guidance to understand your own eligibility based on the role you are applying for.

Why join us

Joining us is your opportunity to pursue potential. You'll belong to a collaborative team that's exploring new and better ways to serve students, teachers and researchers across the globe – for the benefit of individuals, society and the world. Sharing our mission will inspire your own growth, development and progress, in an environment which embraces difference, change and aspiration.

Cambridge University Press & Assessment is committed to being a place where anyone can enjoy a successful career, where it's safe to speak up, and where we learn continuously to improve together. We welcome applications from all candidates, regardless of demographic characteristics (age, disability, educational attainment, ethnicity, gender, marital status, neurodiversity, religion, sex, gender identity and sexual identity), cultural, or social class/background.

We believe better outcomes come through diversity of thought, background and approach. We welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and communities, actively seeking to employ people from a wide range of different communities.