Data Engineer (Maternity Cover 12 month FTC)

Established in 1981 with a single store in the Northwest of England, the JD Group is a leading omni\-channel retailer of Sports Fashion, Outdoors and Gyms with our colleagues working in stores across several retail fascias in many markets around the world.

JD Sports Fashion Plc was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1996 and has been a FTSE100 publicly quoted company since 2019 and continues to grow in the UK and internationally.

We want to be the leading global omnichannel retailer in the sports and outdoor industry. To be a part of this successful company and help us to achieve this you will have the desire to ingrain our strategic goals of being a people\-led, innovative and customer\-focused organisation which provides operational excellence whilst identifying new areas of growth as part of our day to day objectives.

Role Overview:

We are seeking a delivery focused Data Engineer to design, build, and maintain high quality data engineering solutions within JD Group. Reporting to a Data Engineering Area Lead, you will play a key role in developing reliable, scalable data pipelines and curated datasets that support analytics, reporting, AI, and data product use cases. This is a Maternity cover through to Apr\-27\.

You will work closely with other data engineers, analysts, BI developers, data scientists, and business stakeholders to ensure that data is accurate, accessible, and fit for purpose. This role is suited to an engineer who enjoys hands on development, takes ownership of their work, and is committed to engineering excellence and continuous improvement.

Responsibilities:

Data Engineering Delivery

• Design, build, test, and maintain data pipelines for ingestion, transformation, and curation of data from a variety of source systems


• Deliver analytics ready datasets and data models that are reliable, well structured, and easy to consume


• Work from clearly defined requirements and backlogs, contributing estimates, technical input, and delivery plans


• Take ownership of assigned data engineering tasks and deliverables, ensuring work is completed to a high standard


• Support incremental delivery and continuous improvement of data solutions

Technical Excellence \& Best Practice

• Write high quality, maintainable, and well tested code using SQL, Python, and approved data engineering frameworks


• Apply data engineering standards across version control, CI/CD, testing, documentation, and observability


• Ensure pipelines are performant, scalable, and cost efficient within cloud environments


• Contribute to the development and reuse of common patterns, frameworks, and components


• Actively manage and reduce technical debt within owned pipelines and datasets

Data Quality, Governance \& Operations

• Embed data quality checks, validation, and monitoring within pipelines


• Ensure datasets meet agreed governance, security, and access control standards


• Maintain clear documentation for pipelines, data models, and datasets


• Participate in incident investigation, root cause analysis, and resolution of data issues


• Support the ongoing operational health and reliability of data pipelines

Collaboration \& Stakeholder Engagement

• Work closely with analysts, BI developers, and data scientists to understand data requirements and consumption needs


• Collaborate with business stakeholders to clarify requirements and validate outputs


• Communicate progress, risks, and technical considerations clearly to your Area Lead and wider team


• Contribute constructively to team ceremonies, design discussions, and code reviews

Learning \& Continuous Improvement

• Continuously develop technical skills and understanding of the business domain


• Adopt and apply new tools, techniques, and patterns as agreed within the data engineering function


• Share knowledge, best practices, and learnings with the wider data engineering community


• Support and mentor junior data engineers where appropriate

Role Objectives \& KPIs

• High quality, timely delivery of assigned data engineering work


• Reliable, well tested, and well documented data pipelines


• Improved data quality and usability across owned datasets


• Reduced incidents and faster resolution of data issues


• Positive collaboration and feedback from peers and stakeholders


• Consistent adherence to enterprise data engineering standards

Skills and Experience:

• Proven experience in a data engineering role


• Strong hands on experience with SQL and Python


• Experience building and maintaining data pipelines and transformations


• Understanding of data modelling for analytics and reporting use cases


• Experience working in cloud based data platforms, ideally GCP


• Familiarity with orchestration tools, batch processing, and structured data pipelines


• Experience with version control, CI/CD, and basic testing practices


• Ability to work independently on well scoped problems and deliver incrementally


• Strong attention to detail and commitment to data quality

We know our colleagues work tirelessly to make JD Sports the success it is today and in turn, we offer them some amazing benefits including staff Discount On JD Group and other brands within the organisation and personal development opportunities to learn and develop at work.

Thank you for your time

\#JD

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