Job Title
Senior Data Platform Engineer
Department
TSD Cloud & Infrastructure Platforms-BG-UK
Overview of Department
Purpose of Role
Join our Data Platform team at an important point in its evolution and help shape the platforms that underpin how Baillie Gifford stores, manages and uses data.
As a Senior Data Platform Engineer, you’ll take a leading technical role across a broad and evolving estate spanning Microsoft Fabric, Snowflake, PostgreSQL, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server, working across both cloud and on-premises environments. You’ll have the opportunity to influence how these platforms are engineered, automated, operated and introduce new technologies such as AI and help define the standards that support their effective use.
This is a senior engineering role for someone who combines deep expertise with curiosity and a strong service mindset. We don’t expect you to be an expert in every technology. We’re looking for deep expertise in one or more of Microsoft Fabric, Snowflake, PostgreSQL combined with the appetite to broaden your expertise, solve complex problems and help other engineers develop.
Responsibilities
Act as a senior technical contributor across data platform services, providing engineering leadership and trusted technical guidance within your areas of expertise
Help shape the technical direction of the data platform estate, identifying where engineering approaches, tooling or platform capabilities should evolve and addressing technical debt where simplification will improve reliability, supportability and long-term sustainability.
Actively use and promote AI to improve engineering productivity, automation, problem solving, and service quality.
Design, implement, and continually improve secure, scalable, and resilient data platform solutions.
Take technical ownership of platform products and services throughout their lifecycle, including deployment, configuration, patching, upgrades, capacity, and performance.
Develop and maintain engineering standards, principles, patterns, operational procedures and technical documentation that support consistent and safe delivery.
Provide technical leadership for availability, resilience, backup, recovery and disaster-recovery arrangements, including regular validation that recovery capabilities work as intended.
Monitor platform health, availability, performance and capacity, identify risks and drive preventative and corrective measures.
Lead or contribute to the diagnosis of complex incidents and recurring problems, ensuring root causes are understood and corrective actions implemented.
Design and improve automation, Infrastructure as Code and related engineering practices to reduce manual effort, improve repeatability and increase service quality.
Work with customers to understand technical requirements and consumption patterns, helping them select and use appropriate data platform products and services effectively.
Evaluate new and existing data platform technologies and tooling.
Mentor and coach engineers, share knowledge and reduce dependency on individual subject-matter experts through documentation, pairing and cross-skilling.
Work effectively with technology vendors and external support providers.
Participate in appropriate on-call or out-of-hours support arrangements where required for critical services.
What success looks like
Data platform services are secure, resilient, performant and well engineered, with clear technical ownership across their lifecycle.
Engineering standards, patterns and technical direction support consistent, maintainable and safe delivery across the platform estate.
Complex incidents, recurring problems and technical debt are addressed effectively, with root causes understood and simplification used to improve reliability and supportability.
Automation, Infrastructure as Code and appropriate use of AI reduce manual effort, improve repeatability and strengthen engineering productivity and service quality.
Engineers across the team build…