Lead Data Engineer

FDM is a global business and technology consultancy seeking a Lead Data Engineer to work for our client within the public sector. This is initially a 6-month contract with the potential to extend and will be a hybrid role based in either London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Darlington, Edinburgh or Salford.

Our client is seeking Lead Data Engineer to take a key role in the delivery of a secure, scalable Analytical Platform for internal analyst teams. Operating within the Analysis & Corporate Services function, this role is integral to driving the department’s analytical capabilities by improving access to high-quality data and modernising analytical infrastructure.

This is a delivery-focused role requiring a hands-on engineer with strong technical capabilities in cloud infrastructure, data pipeline development, and secure data environments. The platform will enable departmental analysts to work entirely within a secure Python-based environment without reliance on local data downloads.

Responsibilities

• Designing, developing and finalising data infrastructure to support complex analytical workloads
• Building and maintaining secure, efficient data pipelines to ingest, process, and serve internal and external datasets
• Implementing engineering standards and best practices, including version control, testing frameworks, and infrastructure-as-code
• Supporting user acceptance testing (UAT) and contributing to quality assurance processes to ensure a smooth roll-out
• Collaborating with analysts, architects and project leads to ensure platform capabilities align with user needs
• Preparing the platform for an initial user testing phase targeted for October/November
• Identifying and resolving performance or security issues within the data infrastructure.
• Ensuring the long-term stability, scalability and maintainability of the platform post-deployment

Requirements

• Minimum of 8 years’ experience in data engineering within cloud environments, preferably AWS, including use of services such as S3, Lambda, Glue, Redshift, and IAM
• Must be eligible for SC Clearance
• A strong understanding of secure data practices in government or similarly regulated environments
• Practical experience building and managing Python-based analytical tooling environments (e.g. JupyterHub, VS Code in-browser)
• Demonstrable experience developing end-to-end data pipelines, including ingestion, transformation, validation, and output layers
• Familiarity with best practices in CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code (e.g. Terraform), and DevOps principles
• The ability to work independently while proactively engaging with stakeholders and adapting to evolving requirements
• Experience working with large and diverse datasets, ensuring data quality and integrity across multiple sources

Why join us

• Career coaching, mentoring and access to upskilling throughout your entire FDM career
• Assignments with global companies and opportunities to work abroad
• Opportunity to re-skill and up-skill into new areas, develop non-linear career paths and build a skillset within your field
• Annual leave, work-place pension and BAYE share scheme

About FDM

We are a business and technology consultancy and one of the UK's leading employers, recruiting the brightest talent to become the innovators of tomorrow. We have centres across Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific, and a global workforce of over 3,500 Consultants. FDM has shown exponential growth throughout the years, firmly establishing itself as an award-winning employer and is listed on the FTSE4Good Index.

Diversity and Inclusion

FDM Group is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status or any other status protected by federal, provincial or local laws.