Role Title: Advanced Data Engineer

 Location: Cardiff

Job Type: Temporary 

Duration of booking: Expected to last till March 2027 with possible extension

Proposed start date: ASAP

Pay Rates: Up to £28 per hour Umbrella or £26 per hour PAYE inclusive of holiday pay

Hours / Working Days: 37.5 hours per week / Monday to Friday, 9am – 5pm 

Sector: Healthcare 

Based: Office / Hospital 

About the Role

We are seeking an Advanced Data Engineer to design, build, and optimize our cloud-native data architecture and scalable processing pipelines. In this role, you will lead complex data integration projects, drive on-premise to cloud migrations—with a strong focus on Google Cloud Platform (GCP)—and implement modern DataOps practices. You will collaborate closely with multidisciplinary teams to translate business requirements into secure, high-performing data products while upholding software engineering and data governance standards.

Key Responsibilities

• Data Engineering & Cloud Architecture: Design, build, test, and maintain scalable ETL/ELT pipelines and production-ready data products. Lead the migration of legacy data platforms, pipelines, and services from on-premises infrastructure to GCP.
• Pipeline Orchestration & Optimization: Monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize pipeline performance for large-scale datasets using distributed processing tools (Spark, BigQuery) and workflow orchestrators (Airflow, Cloud Composer, Dagster).
• Software & DataOps Best Practices: Apply CI/CD, containerization (Docker), Git-based version control, and automated testing to build production-quality code. Conduct peer code reviews, refactor existing code, and maintain robust technical documentation.
• Data Modeling & Governance: Develop conceptual, logical, and physical data models. Implement metadata management, data lineage, data profiling, and validation frameworks to maintain high data quality. Ensure full compliance with UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018, and ethical data guidelines.
• Collaboration & Delivery: Work in an Agile environment to translate non-technical business requirements into robust technical solutions. Communicate architectural and data concepts clearly to both technical peers and key business stakeholders.

Requirements & Qualifications

• Technical Core: Strong proficiency in SQL and Python; working knowledge or experience with R is highly desirable.
• Cloud & Infrastructure: Hands-on experience designing cloud-native solutions (preferably GCP), migrating on-premise systems to the cloud, and managing relational databases/data warehouses.
• Data Engineering Stack: Demonstrated experience with big data processing (Spark, Dataproc, BigQuery), orchestration (Airflow/Cloud Composer/Prefect), and API-driven data integration.
• DevOps & Quality: Proven background with Git (GitHub/GitLab/Azure DevOps), Docker, CI/CD automation, and modern DataOps principles.
• Education & Certifications:
  • Undergraduate degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent practical work experience.
  • GCP Data Engineer or GCP Cloud Architect certification is highly desirable.