Salary Range: £50,000 - £61,950
Leonardo UK operates a grade-based salary framework with broad bands. The salary range shown reflects the approved grade band for this role, or a narrower hiring range published within that band, and is benchmarked against the external market. Exceptions above the standard range are managed through governance controls to protect internal equity.
We have an exciting opportunity for a Senior Data Engineer to join our team at Leonardo Cyber & Security Division. This is a highly rewarding and hands on role with exposure across both traditional and cutting edge enterprise IT as well as bespoke Operational Technology systems. You will be working in a dynamic environment with a team that is motivated to deliver innovative solutions to customers within defence, government and commercial sectors. We are after creative, passionate, technically savvy and personable people to help grow our practice and solve some of the most exciting and critical challenges to the UK's digital landscape. This role requires strong expertise in building and managing data pipelines using the Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) and Apache NiFi.
This is a UK based onsite role with the option of compressed hours.
What you will do as a Senior Data Engineer:
- Design, develop, and maintain secure and scalable data pipelines using the Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) and Apache NiFi.
- Implement data ingestion, transformation, and integration processes, ensuring data quality and security.
- Collaborate with data architects and security teams to ensure compliance with security policies and data governance standards.
- Manage and monitor large-scale data flows in real-time, ensuring system performance, reliability, and data integrity.
- Develop robust data models to support analytics and reporting within secure environments.
- Perform troubleshooting, debugging, and performance tuning of data pipelines and the Elastic Stack.
- Build dashboards and visualizations in Kibana to enable data-driven decision-making.
- Ensure high availability and disaster recovery for data systems, implementing appropriate backup and replication strategies.
- Document data architecture, workflows, and security protocols to ensure smooth operational handover and audit readiness.
What you'll bring: Core areas (must have):
- UK DV Clearance or the ability obtain it
- Experience working as a Data Engineer in secure or regulated environments.
- Expertise in the Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) for data ingestion, transformation, indexing, and visualization.
- Strong experience with Apache NiFi for building and managing complex data flows and integration processes.
- Knowledge of security practices for handling sensitive data, including encryption, anonymization, and access control.
- Familiarity with data governance, data quality management, and compliance standards in secure environments.
- Experience in managing large-scale, real-time data pipelines and ensuring their performance and reliability.
- Strong scripting and programming skills in Python, Bash, or other relevant languages.
- Working knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) with a focus on data security and infrastructure as code.
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams.
- Detail-oriented with a focus on ensuring data accuracy, quality, and security.
- Proactive problem-solving mindset and ability to troubleshoot complex data pipeline issues.
Desirable:
- Experience working in government, defence, or highly regulated industries with knowledge of relevant standards.
- Experience with additional data processing and ETL tools like Apache Kafka, Spark, or Hadoop.
- Familiarity with containerization and orchestration tools such as Docker and Kubernetes.
- Experience with monitoring and alerting tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, or ELK for data infrastructure.
- Understanding of ML algorithms, their development and implementation
- Confidence developing end-to-end solutions
- Experience with infrastructure as code e.g. Terraform, Ansible
Security Clearance: This role is subject to pre-employment screening in line with the UK Government's Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS). An additional range of Personnel Security Controls referred to as National Security Vetting (NSV) may apply, this could include meeting the eligibility requirements for The Security Check (SC) or Developed Vetting (DV). For more information and guidance please visit: