VP IT - Senior Data Operations Engineer

SMBC Aviation Capital Limited; Dublin; On-site; EUR 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

SMBC Aviation Capital Limited is seeking an experienced data platform operations lead to keep the data platform robust, reliable and well-governed, and to drive the Fabric and Purview transition with a partner.

You will own monitoring, incident management, data quality, and automate pipelines across Azure SQL MI and Power BI, ensuring SLA readiness and modern governance practices.

Qualifications

• 6+ years in data engineering or data-platform operations with hands-on production experience.
• Experience with monitoring, alerting, automation, incident management, root-cause analysis and data-quality control.
• Strong ETL/ELT, data warehousing, data modelling and Power BI with Azure SQL experience.

Responsibilities

• Take ownership of data-platform operations: monitoring, incident management and data-quality controls to meet SLAs.
• Lead the Fabric & Purview transition and ensure workloads are operable and governed.
• Reduce technical debt by automating pipelines and improving data architecture across the estate.
• Oversee third-party support and ensure data pipelines and marts are performant for reporting.

Skills

Data platform operations

Power BI

Azure SQL MI

Fabric & Purview transition

Job description

The essence of this role is operational excellence: keeping SMBC Aviation Capital’s data platform robust, reliable, high-quality and well-governed, and continuously making the underlying data architecture stronger and more best-practice. You take genuine pride in a platform that simply works: refreshes land on time, data is trustworthy, and problems are fixed once. SMBC Aviation Capital is undertaking a medium-term transition to Microsoft Fabric and Microsoft Purview, delivered with a third-party partner. The successful candidate will be closely involved in that transition — helping make the new platform operable and well-governed, and operating it once live .

Core Responsibilities

• Take clear ownership of data-platform operations: establish or tighten monitoring, alerting, incident management and data-quality controls, and meet the agreed operational SLAs (e.g. platform uptime and on-time refresh rate).
• Reduce operational risk by migrating off legacy and Excel-based data sources onto governed, supported platform standards.
• Cut technical debt against an agreed, tracked backlog, and deliver measurable automation and reliability improvements.
• Establish reusable pipeline, data-model and monitoring patterns that raise the quality and consistency of the estate.
• Play an active role in the Fabric & Purview transition — helping ensure migrated workloads are operable, supportable, monitored and cleanly handed into business-as-usual.

Operational excellence & platform reliability (core)

• Own the day-to-day reliability, availability, performance and quality of the data platform.
• Run monitoring, alerting and automation across all data and reporting pipelines; lead incident management, root-cause analysis and permanent fixes.
• Meet agreed operational SLAs and act as the senior escalation point for platform issues.
• Oversee any third-party or 24/7 managed-service data platform/process support — including transitioning front-line (L1) monitoring and basic actions to a managed service and governing it to SLA.
• Continuously reduce technical debt and make the data architecture more robust and best-practice.
• Build, operate and optimise scalable data pipelines, ETL/ELT and data models across the estate (Azure SQL MI and Power BI today; Microsoft Fabric as the platform transitions).
• Maintain data marts so data is organised, performant and fit for reporting and business self-service.
• Streamline external data feeds and drive reuse of central ETLs across the organisation.

Governance & data management

• Ensure data quality, security and governance through robust validation and governance frameworks (using Microsoft Purview as it comes online).
• Drive governed self-service: ensure datasets have owners and repositories are well maintained.
• Apply master-data-management principles so key entities stay consistent through to reporting.
• Apply SMBC standards without exception: EU data residency, Entra ID authentication, secrets in Key Vault, and Design Authority sign-off for new designs.

Platform transition (Fabric & Purview) – medium term

• Work closely with the third-party delivery partner on the transition to Fabric and Purview — representing operational, quality and governance requirements and reviewing their work.
• Ensure each migrated workload is operable, supportable and cleanly transitioned into business-as-usual, and operate the new platform once live.
• Contribute to the platform roadmap and the Fabric & Purview target-state design from an operability perspective.
• Work with technology & business stakeholders, product owners, architects and engineers to understand requirements and keep the platform aligned to them.
• Identify and implement automation, process and efficiency improvements, and support knowledge sharing across the team.

Qualifications & Experience

• 6+ years in data engineering or data-platform operations, with a strong recent track record running production data platforms — recency of hands-on experience matters more than total years.
• Demonstrable data-platform operations experience: monitoring, alerting, automation, incident management, root-cause analysis and data-quality control (DataOps / SRE-style practices).
• Strong hands-on ETL/ELT, data warehousing, data modelling and Power BI, with solid Azure SQL experience.
• Strong understanding of end-to-end data flows: source systems, ingestion, transformation, marts and reporting, including lineage, dependencies and failure impact.
• Experience implementing and enforcing data governance, quality and operational controls.
• Comfortable operating across current and target Microsoft data platforms — Azure SQL MI today, and Microsoft Fabric & Purview as the platform transitions.
• Experience working with, and holding to account, third-party and managed-service providers.
• Strong working knowledge of DevOps / DataOps and automation.
• A verifiable record of meeting operational and delivery commitments while working independently.
• A track record of owning incident response, support and routine operational work day to day, not only projects and new builds.
• Experience in aircraft leasing, fleet management, banking or treasury/finance.
• Experience operating through a major data-platform migration or transition.
• Master data management and enterprise integration experience.
• Applied (not conceptual) awareness of AI / GenAI where it supports data operations.

Critical behaviours

These embody our culture and are central to how we work together at SMBC Aviation Capital:

• Respect: Two-way communication: listen intently, give quieter voices a platform and be conscious of tone. Respect people’s time and be flexible in accommodating others.
• Trust: Create a psychologically safe space. Do what you say you will do, when you say you will do it. Be honest, communicate openly and be respectful of each other’s needs.
• Integrity: Always do what is right including when no one is watching; treat people with respect and kindness; be self-aware, compassionate and embrace diversity.
• Connect: Collaborate to unleash the full potential of our diverse talent. Respect each other’s expertise and perspective and welcome challenge. Foster an inclusive and fun environment where accomplishments are recognised and take pride in winning together.
• Adapt: Be brave and curious – anticipate the future and be proactive. Have a ‘why not’ attitude, learn from previous experiences. Call out bureaucracy when it is evident in a process or way of working. Be agile to meet and exceed our customers’ needs. Demonstrate resilience and support each other.
• Achieve: Take accountability and ownership to deliver results, be ambitious and take pride in everything we do. Set each other up for success and share insights. Do what it takes to drive positive change and seek opportunities to innovate and grow our business and people.

Take your career to new heights – come join us at SMBC Aviation Capital

We are a fast paced, growing business with a focus on excellence where a world of opportunity awaits candidates with the right attitude and ambition.

Through the SMBC Aviation Capital People Commitment we offer a comprehensive suite of benefits, aligned to your needs as you move through different career and life stages. The SMBC AC People Commitment also includes our people-led culture; reward & recognition; along with our learning, wellbeing, inclusion, engagement, and CSR initiatives. In return, we ask you to bring your ambition and commitment to your work here at SMBC AC to mutually create an exceptional employee experience.

Our workplace is one where diversity is welcome, and people of all backgrounds are supported to be at their best. We are an equal opportunities employer and strive to build an ever-inclusive work environment. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees. Should you have a reasonable accommodation request please reach out to us at [e-mail]