DV Cleared Senior Data Engineer (Defence & Aerospace)

We are currently recruiting for a Senior Data Engineer to support a Leonardo defence project. This is an opportunity to work on secure, complex data engineering solutions within a Defence environment, collaborating with technical specialists and customer stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build and maintain secure, scalable data solutions across the full life cycle, including data acquisition, integration, storage, processing and analysis.
• Develop and maintain data ingestion and transformation pipelines using Apache NiFi, Python and SQL.
• Design data models, schemas, data contracts and Interface Control Documents (ICDs) to support reliable system integration.
• Integrate data from REST APIs and other source systems, including Parquet and S3-compatible object storage.
• Implement data validation, assurance, metadata management and data traceability.
• Develop tools to support data-driven insights and task automation.
• Work with customer and internal stakeholders to define data, interface and tool requirements.
• Collaborate with DevOps Engineers, Data Scientists, Analysts and Cyber Consultants.
• Take ownership of technical deliverables, ensuring quality, security and maintainability.

Essential Skills & Experience

Candidates should have demonstrable experience in:

• Data engineering within a project or production environment.
• Strong Python and SQL skills, including developing, testing and optimising data pipelines.
• Hands-on experience with Apache NiFi for data ingestion, routing, transformation and orchestration.
• Data modelling and schema design, including data contracts or Interface Control Documents (ICDs).
• Parquet and S3-compatible object storage.
• REST API integration and troubleshooting data exchanges between systems.
• OpenShift or Kubernetes environments.
• GitLab CI/CD practices and automated build, test and deployment pipelines.
• Data validation, quality controls and assurance.
• Metadata management, data lineage and traceability.
• Strong problem-solving, critical thinking and stakeholder communication skills.

Desirable Experience

• A degree in STEM, Data, AI, Programming or a related discipline.
• Experience influencing technical decisions and supporting capability development.
• Exposure to big data technologies such as Spark, Hadoop or NiFi.
• Experience with Ansible and Terraform.
• Understanding of machine learning algorithms and deployment.