Lead Data & Systems Architect

Job description

Job responsibilities

Core Duties and Responsibilities (Key Result Areas)

Communication and Relationships

• Build and maintain effective working relationships with internal and external stakeholders, including NHS partners, suppliers, and technical teams.
• Provide expert technical guidance to colleagues, ensuring clear communication of complex data engineering concepts.
• Present technical recommendations and project updates to senior leadership and stakeholders.
• Support the Head of Data Engineering in promoting best practices across data engineering and analytics teams.
• Contribute to documentation, reports, and formal papers on data engineering projects and initiatives.

Having the ability to deal with resulting potentially aggressive/antagonistic situations.

Provide and receive highly complex, sensitive, and contentious information, presenting information, to a wide range of stakeholders in a formal setting.

To oversee team members to deliver the requirements listed above; engage and liaise with key stakeholder, in particular:

o To support the delivery of day-to-day activities and projects

o To manage team and drive delivery of a range of business initiatives and projects

o To support the identification and sharing of best practice in employee engagement

o To operate in a highly political and sensitive environment

o Support the portfolio of initiatives in demonstrating value for money for the current spend through tracking, managing, and delivering agreed benefits.

Analytical and Judgemental

• Design, develop, and maintain scalable and secure data pipelines in cloud environments.
• Analyse complex datasets to ensure data integrity, accuracy, and reliability.
• Support the evaluation and implementation of new data technologies and tools.
• Apply data engineering best practices to improve the efficiency of data processing and storage.
• Identify risks and mitigation strategies related to data engineering initiatives.

Be responsible for a high standard of work supporting the delivery of projects on time, to quality standards and in a cost-effective manner. Maintain project initiation documents and associated plans with regular team meetings to monitor progress and resources.

Demonstrate effective stakeholder management across different departments and at all levels.

Ensure that the projects maintain business focus, have clear authority and that the context, including risks, are actively managed in alignment with the strategic priorities of NHS.

Financial and Physical Resources

• Support cost-effective data engineering solutions within allocated budgets.
• Contribute to procurement decisions for data platforms, tools, and services.
• Ensure optimal use of cloud resources to maintain budgetary efficiency.

Act in a way that is compliant with Standing Orders and Standing Financial Instructions in the discharge of budget management responsibilities.

Budget holder for Data Engineering team, budget setting with the Head of Data Engineering. Responsible for ensuring adherence to the budget, ongoing monitoring of expenditure against budget and ensuring the appropriate documentation is available for scrutiny.

HR Responsibilities

Directly manages the Data Engineering team, responsible for day-to-day work assigned to Team.

Responsible for the recruitment of team staff, chair of recruitment panels and acting as the recruiting officer.

Responsible for undertaking appraisal and personal development including progressing any disciplinary or capability issues.

• Provide mentorship and technical guidance to data engineers.
• Support training and development initiatives to enhance team capabilities.
• Contribute to performance reviews and team development discussions.
• Foster an inclusive and collaborative working environment.

Managing third parties (such as consultants/interims) to ensure deliverables are met in a timely manner and within budget.

Information Resources

• Ensure adherence to NHS data governance and security policies.
• Support the implementation and maintenance of cloud-based data infrastructure.
• Contribute to the development of standard operating procedures for data engineering processes.
• Maintain technical documentation and ensure compliance with data management best practices.

Drafting reports summarising status on issues, appraising outcomes, and providing progress reports for the Data Engineering leads

Collate as required, qualitative and quantitative information and lead appropriate analysis to develop robust business cases and contribute to project products.

Analyse, interpret and present data to highlight issues, risks and support decision making.

Policy and Service Development Implementation

• Ensure compliance with NHS data governance, security, and privacy policies.
• Support the development and maintenance of robust data engineering standards.
• Promote the adoption of automation and modern data engineering practices.
• Provide recommendations for policy and process improvements related to data management.

Responsible for proposing and drafting changes, implementation and interpretation to policies, guidelines, and service level agreements (SLAs) which may impact service.

The post holder will need to maintain a good knowledge of emerging policies from government departments for example pensions, change management, constitution. This will assist in the thinking and definition of the strategy discussions for the data engineering CoP and stakeholders.

Research and Development

• Keep up to date with emerging data engineering technologies and methodologies.
• Research and evaluate new tools, techniques, and best practices to enhance data engineering capabilities.
• Support innovation in data-driven decision-making within the organisation.

Plan, develop and evaluate methods and processes for gathering, analysing, interpreting, and presenting data and information.

Deliver projects to comply with key performance indicators.

Co-ordinating Research & Development initiatives, delegating as appropriate.

Planning and Organisation

• Contribute to strategic planning for the data engineering function.
• Work collaboratively with the Business Intelligence and Data teams to align data engineering efforts with organisational goals.
• Plan and prioritise workload to meet project deadlines and service delivery requirements.

Contribute to identifying interdependencies across projects/functions, potential impacts on wider organisation, resource requirements and building in contingency and adjustments as necessary.

Contribute to the development of performance and governance strategies and the development and implementation of improvement programmes, in accordance with the CSU.

Contribute to short-, medium- and long-term business plans, achieving quality outcomes.

The job description and person specification are an outline of the tasks, responsibilities and outcomes required of the role. The job holder will carry out any other duties as may reasonably be required by their line manager.

Person Specification

Education / Training / Qualifications

Essential

• Professional qualification at degree level in an information related discipline or equivalent experience
• Evidence of continued professional development

Desirable

• Post graduate qualification
• Prince 2 qualified
• Cloud certification

Experience

Essential

• Proven experience in the provision of data management systems
• Significant experience in design and modelling of complex NHS data and systems
• Experience in NHS Architectural/Systems Management role
• Expert Knowledge of industry systems/technologies supporting Data Management/ Business Intelligence

Desirable

• Experience in designing database architecture in a complex NHS environment
• Substantial experience of designing solutions within Architectural capacity within a formal and structured environment utilising version control

Skills / Abilities

Essential

• Specialist analytical skills to interpret complex data specifications and requirements to derive work plans for the data analysts
• Effective interpersonal and influencing skills and the ability to interpret and communicate complex information to staff with varying technical knowledge
• Aptitude to design technical solutions that will deliver the long-term strategy of the organisation
• Logical approach to problem solving
• Advanced keyboard skills
• Uses innovation to deliver solutions
• Proven abilities in scripting with Powershell, C#, VB, SQL
• Able to prioritise work, schedule and organise own time and that of the team and commitment to team-working
• Pragmatic approach to deal with extremely complex situations

Desirable

• Development skills in various other programming languages that allows automation

Knowledge

Essential

• Highly developed specialist knowledge of enterprise level database software including Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server.
• Expert knowledge of data manipulation tools and techniques such as SSIS and Hive
• Knowledge and experience of implementing information reporting flows between systems and organisations
• eHighly proficient in the use of SQL to manipulate and transform large and complex relational datasets
• Knowledge in the provision of multidimensional data stores and data modelling
• Knowledge of information governance standards for data security and confidentiality and an understanding of their application in practice
• Working knowledge of market leading technologies that support Data Management.
• In-depth knowledge of NHS data dictionary, Commissioning datasets NHS Information Systems (e.g. SUS)

Interpersonal Skills

Essential

• Well-developed communication skills, (verbal and written). Able to understand, make recommendations on, and convey information on the project to senior stakeholders, both internal and external (including outside the NHS).
• Good presentational skills for conveying complex concepts.
• Ability to build co-operative relationships, and manage groups / stakeholders to gain consensus

Desirable

• Ability to use informed persuasion to influence others.

Special Aptitudes

Essential

• Awareness of equality and valuing diversity principles
• Understanding of Confidentiality and Data Protection Act

Mobility

Essential

• Car driver / owner or reasonable alternative

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Employer details

Employer name

NHS Arden and Greater East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit

Address

County Hall

Glenfield

Leicester

LE3 8HD

Employer's website

https://www.ardengemcsu.nhs.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)