We are recruiting for a Data Engineering Senior Lead!

About Nesta

We are Nesta, the UK’s innovation agency for social good. We design, test and scale solutions to society’s biggest problems. Our three missions are to give every child a fair start, help people live healthy lives, and create a sustainable future where the economy works for both people and the planet. 

For over 20 years, we have worked to support, encourage and inspire innovation. We work in three roles: as an innovation partner working with frontline organisations to design and test new solutions, as a venture builder supporting new and early stage businesses, and as a system shaper creating the conditions for innovation. 

Harnessing the rigour of science and the creativity of design, we work relentlessly to change millions of lives for the better. Find out more at nesta.org.uk. 

The role

We are looking for a Data Engineering Senior Lead to join the Data Analytics team at Nesta to help build capacity for doing big data science. If you are an experienced data engineer who wants to apply your rigorous approach to problem solving, whilst deploying a diverse range of data technologies and data science methodologies, this is the role for you. You will enjoy this role if you are someone who prefers elegant solutions over scrappy code. You will be leading a small team of Data Engineers who underpin this work. As the Data Engineering Senior Lead you will:

• Lead a small team of data engineers to execute the infrastructure roadmap for the practice

• Take the lead role in developing robust and scalable infrastructure to boost data analytics at Nesta

• Work closely with other Nesta teams to ensure that our methods scale effectively to meet the demands of Nesta’s missions

• Explore opportunities to develop new tools and data pipelines that build on our current stack of data infrastructure to advance Nesta’s goals.

• Work to meet the demands of some of Nesta’s other stand alone projects.

• Identify opportunities to improve the open source software infrastructure to enable data analytics for social impact

Some examples of previous and current Nesta projects with a strong data engineering component include:

• Open Jobs Observatory

• arXlive

• EURITO

• Creative Nation

The person

Essential

• A BSc or MSc qualification in a relevant quantitative discipline plus three years relevant experience in the areas listed below; or

• At least five years experience programming in Python;

• Experience developing in a UNIX environment;

• Data pipeline technologies (e.g. Airflow, Luigi);

• CI/CD technologies (e.g. Actions, Jenkins, Travis);

• Database technologies as an administrator, developer and user of any mainstream database (SQL, NoSQL, Graph);

• Git + GitHub (or equivalent) for version control, whilst working in a collaborative development or production environment;

• Text processing pipelines, or machine learning and natural language processing methods;

• ETL with standard python tools;

• Cloud development and/or management using AWS (EC2, ECS, batch, S3);

• Line management experience.

Desirable

• Project management experience;

• Online data collection, e.g. via web-scraping and APIs;

• Strategic decision-making with regards to technology stack, skills and relationships inside and outside of the organisation;

• Experience of working in the public or third sector, or a start-up environment;

• A strong communicator with a candid and fair approach to prioritising tasks.

What we offer

Salary: circa £65,000 plus array of benefits, including health cash plans, dental insurance, the ability to buy and sell annual leave, eyecare vouchers and more

Location: This role can be based in London or Edinburgh and all of our employees work in a hybrid model. Remote working may also be considered. 

Applications from job seekers who require current skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. Please indicate a requirement for sponsorship in the application form. 

Term:  Permanent 

Hours: This is a full-time role but we offer a range of flexible working arrangements and encourage our people to take advantage of them. Many do. 

Reports to: Director of Data Analytics

Making an application

To apply for this role, please submit your application via the link below. Please submit a CV and answer the question on Applied.

Please note that this is a rolling advert and we will aim to get back to applicants within 2 weeks of submitting your application. If successful you will be invited to interview and to complete a short technical task.

At Nesta, we believe that a diverse workforce leads to an organisation that is more innovative, more creative and gets better results.

We want our workforce to represent the diversity of the people and communities we serve. We also want our workplace to be one where different experiences, expertise and perspectives are valued, and where everyone is encouraged to grow and develop.

This means that when we are recruiting, we actively seek to reach a diverse pool of candidates. It also means that we are happy to consider any reasonable adjustments that potential employees may need to in order to be successful.

We recognise the importance of a good balance between work and home life, so we do everything we can to accommodate flexible working, including working from home, compressed or part-time hours, job shares and other arrangements.

Please just let us know in your application or at any stage throughout the process (and beyond) if these are options you’d like to explore.