Data Engineering Lead

Application deadline: Tuesday, 03 June 2025 - 23:45

Location: Cambridge, UK (Hybrid working)

Full-Time : 35 Hours per week

Contract: Open-ended

Salary: £55,000 per annum, plus competitive 12% pension benefit.

Annual Leave : 25 days pro rata in year 1, increasing by 1 day pa to 28 days.

BirdLife International is the world’s largest nature conservation partnership. Through our unique local-to-global approach, we deliver high impact and long-term conservation for the benefit of nature and people.

We are looking for a Data Engineering Lead to head up the team supporting our ERP services. In this role, you will take the lead on how we use data across the organisation - your work will have a meaningful impact on everything from business systems to scientific data.

How you will do this:

• Partnering with colleagues across the organisation to understand the organisational requirements. 
• Helping design and selecting the right technology solutions to meet those requirements.
• Proposing resourcing options for development and ongoing support to business/conservation systems.
• Supporting, managing and maintaining the data fabric and underlying systems within the Azure environment.
• Helping to run, improve, and manage projects for our Unit 4 ERP system.
• Leading the Data Engineering team within the IT department.
• Researching and developing best practices for BirdLife IT to handle data.
• Working with teams across the organisation to keep things running smoothly and reliably.
• Designing, implementing, and managing databases and data models using Azure SQL Database, MySQL Database, PostgreSQL, PostGIS, and other Azure database services.
• Design and implementation of data strategy to include data pipelines, data warehousing and BI analytics.

Ideally you will have:

• Comprehensive experience of IaaS services – Azure, AWS.
• Expertise with database development and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience of Azure Synapse and Azure Data factory.
• Experience with principles of continuous integration and deployment.
• Comprehensive experience of MS Azure.
• Experience of using version control (Git, Github)
• Comprehensive experience of databases. MySQL, TSQL, PostGIS, PostgreSQL.
• Extensive experience in scripting languages: PowerShell, bash, R and Python
• Proven ability to manage multiple technical projects.
• Proven ability to motivate and guide a small busy team.

See the full job description here.

Some of our benefits:

• We are able to offer a hybrid model of working on-site and from home/remote for most roles, which helps to ensure a flexible work-life balance.
• A chance to work in the award-winning David Attenborough Building, which brings together much of the Cambridge-based conservation community on a ‘conservation campus.’
• A generous pension scheme, up to 12% company contribution.
• Holiday starting at 25 days excluding Bank Holidays and increasing for every year of service up to a maximum of 28 days.
• Full access to LinkedIn Learning with access to more than 13,000 high-quality, on-demand courses.
• Cycle to work scheme.
• Employee Assistance Programme, including access to Health Assured online health portal (webinars, nutritional advice, 4-week programmes, financial wellbeing and more).

BirdLife values a diverse workforce and welcomes applications from all sections of the community. Find out more about our Diversity statement.

We are committed to building and maintaining an inclusive and supportive culture, a place where we can all be ourselves and succeed on merit. We aim to promote a more inclusive environment, which attracts all candidates and signals our commitment to celebrate and promote diversity.

We will consider putting into place appropriate reasonable adjustments for candidates who may have a disability.

Interviews: Interviews will be held week commencing 09 June 2025