Lead Data Engineer – Head of Role

Are you an expert Data Engineer looking to use your technical knowledge and experience in a different way?

Are you passionate about building and supporting data engineering capability?

DWP is the UK's largest government department. We help people into work and make payments worth over £195bn a year to support some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

DWP Digital creates digital services that almost everyone in the UK relies on at some point in their lives. We’re carrying out a once-in-a-generation digital transformation - a task of size and scale unmatched elsewhere.

As the Data Engineer Head of Role, you will lead the Data Engineer profession across DWP Digital. You will be an expert Data Engineer practitioner with broad industry experience who can define and assure best practice while influencing, steering, building capability and mentoring others.

If you have extensive data engineering experience and have built and led a community of practice, we’d love to hear from you.

Job description

As Head of Role, you will be responsible for building a community of skilled data engineering professionals. You will manage the building and developing of a Community of Practice identity within DWP and across government to encourage members to develop and share transferable skills, knowledge and experience.

Working with other Head of Roles, you’ll help deliver a “joined-up” service to our Digital functions, providing best practice guidance on ways of working. The shared vision is to empower our Digital communities to define standards and enable effective professional performance of practice members.

You will need sound knowledge in the development of communities of practice, as well as being able to role model across the practice.

You can expect to:

• Promote the value of Communities of Practice, encouraging members to contribute, build and maintain an effective professional community
• Define, update and implement Career Pathways to enhance capability development, talent management and reduce attrition
• Define and implement the Data Engineering standards and Best Practices for DWP
• Understand the demands and development of the profession in the wider industry and feed this into the capability roadmap
• Keep abreast of new techniques, technologies and ways of working across the private and public sector
• Using expert coaching and mentoring skills empower the Community members to continually review and question ways of working, promoting an appetite for continuous improvement
• Overseeing data engineering recruitment and placing candidates into the most appropriate role
• Building and managing senior stakeholder relationships, influencing outcomes and ensuring risks and issues are resolved appropriately.

Essential criteria

• You will be an experienced Data Engineer with significant knowledge of data engineering, and you will understand the value that data engineering holds within a digital function
• You will be a passionate advocate of communities of practice – you can confidently articulate the value of them and have experience building self-sustaining professional communities
• Excellent leadership and stakeholder management skills – you can identify and build relationships at all levels, and can negotiate and influence at a senior level on issues and the development and enhancement of services, products & systems.

Desirable

• Experience of designing and implementing a capability strategy to develop and enhance skills within a team/group/organisation
• Experience in coaching, mentoring, peer reviews and creating development opportunities on a large scale.

Benefits

• An employer pension contribution of up to 28.97% For further information please click here.
• Annual leave rising up to 30 days, (based on your working pattern).
• Family friendly flexible working arrangements, such as hybrid working, job sharing, term-time working, flexi-time and compressed hours.
• Learning and development tailored to your role this could include industry recognised qualifications, coaching and mentoring.
• An inclusive and diverse environment with opportunities to join staff networks including: Women’s Network, National Race Network, National Disability Network (THRIVE) and many more.