Brookbanks is a leading UK multi-disciplinary development consultancy, helping land promoters, housebuilders and developers take projects from initial appraisal through to successful delivery. With 8 offices across the UK and continuing to grow, our in-house teams bring together expertise across civil and infrastructure engineering, structural engineering, MEP, highways and transport, flood risk and drainage, cost management and development management.
We believe in giving our people the autonomy, flexibility and trust to do their best work. Our teams are encouraged to challenge the status quo, bring forward new ideas and make a meaningful impact on the way we work and the projects we deliver.
As a private equity-backed business, we are growing quickly through both organic growth and acquisition. This growth presents an exciting opportunity to strengthen our data and technology foundations, helping us scale intelligently while maintaining the quality, responsiveness and personal service our clients value.
As a Lead Data Engineer you'll:
- Working from a blank slate to develop and shape Brookbanks' data roadmap, identifying where better data can have the greatest impact on business performance.
- Work directly with Finance, Operations, Delivery and Business Development to understand requirements and turn business questions into practical data solutions.
- Design and build a centralised data platform using Microsoft Fabric and/or Azure Databricks.
- Integrate data from our project management, finance, time recording, HR, Asana and HubSpot systems into a single, reliable data environment.
- Establish consistent master data across projects, clients, teams and other key business information.
- Develop and optimise ETL/ELT pipelines using Python, SQL, Azure services and Fabric or Databricks.
- Build and maintain Power BI data models and dashboards, providing clear insight into areas such as fee pipeline, WIP, utilisation, capacity and project profitability.
- Rationalise existing spreadsheets and reporting solutions, moving fragmented reporting onto a scalable central platform.
- Establish data governance, quality and security best practices.
- Apply software engineering best practices including version control, testing, CI/CD and environment separation.
- Act as the business's data authority, helping senior leaders understand what is possible, the associated costs and the relevant trade-offs.
- Continuously improve the performance, scalability and cost efficiency of our data platform.
What's in it for you at Brookbanks?
- Personable environment: you'll be part of a personable business where you're more than just a number.
- Roadmap for progression: scope to grow with the business to Chief Technical Officer.
- Autonomy: you'll be our first dedicated data hire, giving you genuine ownership to shape the function, roadmap and technology choices.
- Senior influence: you'll work directly with leadership and have a visible impact on how Brookbanks uses data to make decisions.
- Innovation: you'll have the freedom to establish modern data practices and challenge existing ways of working.
- Hybrid and flexible working: we trust you to decide how you work best and endeavour to accommodate your personal circumstances.
- Scale and scope: you'll help build the data foundations that support a growing consultancy and influence how the business operates at scale.
What do we look for?
- 4+ years' experience in data engineering or a related field.
- Strong SQL and Python skills, with experience building and maintaining data pipelines.
- Experience with Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Services, Snowflake and/or Databricks.
- Experience integrating data from multiple business systems and creating coherent data models.
- Experience building Power BI semantic models and dashboards, or a direct equivalent such as Tableau.
- Strong understanding of data modelling, schema design and ETL/ELT best practices.
- Experience applying software engineering practices to data engineering, including version control, CI/CD, testing and code review.
- Comfortable working independently and setting priorities in an ambiguous environment.
- Confident communicating with senior non-technical stakeholders and translating technical concepts into clear business terms.
- Experience with data warehouse modernisation, finance systems, APIs, orchestration or infrastructure-as-code would be advantageous.