Halfords on cord

Halfords

Head of Data Engineering

External position
Worcestershire, UK
Hiring internally for Halfords?
Retail · Automotive
Halfords is the UK’s leading retailer of motoring, cycling and leisure products and services.
Posted
6 days ago
Checked
cord regularly checks that external positions are still open
2 days ago

Skills & Experience

Job roles: Head of Data
Experience level: Lead, Leadership
Core skills considered: Databricks, Data Architecture, Building Teams, Stakeholder Management, Cloud Computing
Other skills considered: Data Pipelines, Data Warehousing, Agile, Scrum

Logistics

Base salary: Undisclosed
Some companies on cord are unable to disclose salaries publicly due to internal company policies. Message the company for salary information.
Employment type: Permanent
Remote working: Hybrid (up to 2 remote days p/w)
Visa sponsorship: Not available

Job Description

This is a critical leadership role responsible for shaping and evolving Halfords data engineering capability at a pivotal point in its journey.

You will lead teams that design, build and operate the data platforms and services that underpin analytics, BI and data products. More importantly, you will simplify and evolve a complex, mixed data landscape into a modern, scalable and trusted data platform.

Working closely with the Director of Data, AI and Analytics, you will define the engineering direction, set standards and guide the transition from legacy and fragmented environments towards a more unified, future-ready architecture, with Databricks at its core.

This is not a role focused purely on governance or theory. It requires someone who can bring clarity to complexity, make pragmatic decisions and lead teams through real-world change, balancing modern engineering practices with the realities of an evolving estate.


Key Responsibilities

  • Define and lead the data engineering strategy, shaping how data platforms and services are built, scaled and operated across the business
  • Drive the evolution of the data landscape, simplifying legacy environments and enabling a transition to modern data platforms
  • Lead and develop a high-performing data engineering team, providing technical leadership, coaching and clear direction
  • Establish engineering standards and best practice across the data development lifecycle, improving reliability, maintainability and delivery confidence
  • Partner with senior stakeholders to prioritise initiatives, shape roadmaps and ensure data services meet the needs of the business
  • Oversee the design and delivery of robust, scalable data services that enable analytics, BI and data products
  • Define integration patterns and approaches that enable secure, efficient and scalable data exchange across the organisation
  • Champion secure and compliant data practices, embedding governance without slowing delivery
  • Identify opportunities to improve ways of working, tooling and capability, raising the overall maturity of data engineering over time
  • Navigate a blended landscape of legacy and modern platforms, running parallel tracks where needed while driving long-term simplification

About You

You are an experienced data engineering leader who has operated in complex, evolving environments and understands how to move from fragmented data landscapes to more modern, scalable platforms.

You are as comfortable setting direction as you are engaging with technical detail, and you bring credibility through having built and delivered data engineering solutions yourself earlier in your career.

You will likely bring:

  • Strong experience leading data engineering teams and delivering data platforms at scale
  • Deep understanding of modern data technologies, particularly Databricks and cloud-based data services
  • Experience working across mixed or legacy environments and leading platform or data transformations
  • A pragmatic approach to architecture and engineering, focused on outcomes rather than perfection
  • The ability to simplify complexity and define clear approaches in ambiguous environments
  • Strong stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence both technical and non-technical audiences
  • A track record of building capability, improving standards and developing engineering teams

You will thrive in this role if you:

  • Focus on outcomes over process
  • Are comfortable working in evolving or transitional environments
  • Can bring structure and discipline without slowing delivery
  • Are able to prioritise effectively and focus on what will drive the greatest impact
  • Operate confidently in ambiguity and can make clear, informed decisions

Company Benefits

  • A fair and competitive salary evaluated against market data, annual discretionary bonus scheme, pension, life assurance, 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays and enhanced family leave.
  • Commitment and dedication to your ongoing personal and professional development. We help you to own and grow your potential so you can be at your best in your current role and to support your future career aspirations.
  • We offer hybrid working in our Support Centre, you will be based at our Support Centre 3 days a week with an optional 2 days working from home.
  • You will have access to a wealth of employee discounts across the Halfords suite of products and services.
  • Wellbeing and inclusion are at the heart of our colleague experience. We offer resources and ongoing support to enhance your wellbeing at work and active Colleague Networks supporting inclusion initiatives across Halfords
Head of Data Engineering at Halfords
Position posted 6 days ago

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Starling Bank on cord

Starling Bank

Full Stack Engineer (ML Ops)

London, UK
FinTech · Banking · Finance
A better bank for everyone
Active
over 6 months ago
Responds to
0% of requests
Responds in
1h 55m
Requests
7 pending

Skills & Experience

Job roles: Full Stack
Experience level: Mid, Senior
Core skills considered: Java, React, Redux, AWS, JavaScript

Logistics

Base salary: £70K - £110K
Employment type: Permanent
Remote working: Hybrid (up to 2 remote days p/w)
Visa sponsorship: Not available

Job Description

Starling is the UK’s first and leading digital bank on a mission to fix banking! Our vision is fast technology, fair service, and honest values. All at the tap of a phone, all the time.

Starling is the UK’s first and leading digital bank on a mission to fix banking! We built a new kind of bank because we knew technology had the power to help people save, spend and manage their money in a new and transformative way.

We’re a fully licensed UK bank with the culture and spirit of a fast-moving, disruptive tech company. We’re a bank, but better: fairer, easier to use and designed to demystify money for everyone. We employ more than 3,000 people across our London, Southampton, Cardiff and Manchester offices.

Our technologists are at the very heart of Starling and enjoy working in a fast-paced environment that is all about building things, creating new stuff, and disruptive technology that keeps us on the cutting edge of fintech. We operate a flat structure to empower you to make decisions regardless of what your primary responsibilities may be, innovation and collaboration will be at the core of everything you do. Help is never far away in our open culture, you will find support in your team and from across the business, we are in this together!

The way to thrive and shine within Starling is to be a self-driven individual and be able to take full ownership of everything around you: From building things, designing, discovering, to sharing knowledge with your colleagues and making sure all processes are efficient and productive to deliver the best possible results for our customers. Our purpose is underpinned by five Starling values: Listen, Keep It Simple, Do The Right Thing, Own It, and Aim For Greatness.

Hybrid Working

We have a Hybrid approach to working here at Starling - our preference is that you're located within a commutable distance of one of our offices so that we're able to interact and collaborate in person. We don't like to mandate how much you visit the office and work from home, that's to be agreed upon between you and your manager.

Our Data Environment

Our Data teams are excited about the value of data within the business, powers our product decisions to improve things for our customers and enhance effective and agile decision making, regardless of what their primary tech stack may be. Hear from the team in our latest blogs or our case studies with Women in Tech.

We are looking for talented data professionals at all levels to join the team. We value people being engaged and caring about customers, caring about the code they write and the contribution they make to Starling. People with a broad ability to apply themselves to a multitude of problems and challenges, who can work across teams do great things here at Starling, to continue changing banking for good.

Requirements

We have built our entire banking platform in house and mostly in Java. We are looking for people who want to work on building the tooling that is used by our engineers on a daily basis.

We are looking for people who are truly full stack, and are as comfortable polishing their javascript front end as they are debugging the innards of their java applications database interactions, or standing up infrastructure with terraform. We are looking for people who can:

  • Design REST apis.
  • Code backend services, ideally using Java, or another other server side compiled language.
  • Develop modern front ends, ideally using React and Redux.
  • Get their code into the cloud and support it there, ideally on AWS.
  • Believe in clean coding, simple solutions, automated testing and continuous deployment.
  • Like to take ownership of a feature from the original idea through to live.
  • Think (like us) that a small number of empowered developers is the right way to deliver software.

Company Benefits

  • 33 days holiday (including flexible bank holidays)
  • An extra day’s holiday for your birthday
  • 16 hours paid volunteering time a year
  • Part-time and/or flexible hours available for most roles
  • Salary sacrifice, company enhanced pension scheme
  • Life insurance at 4x your salary
  • Hybrid/remote working
  • Private Medical Insurance with VitalityHealth including mental health support and cancer care. Partner benefits include discounts with Waitrose, Mr&Mrs Smith and Peloton
  • Generous family-friendly policies
  • Varied social groups set up and run by our employees
  • Perkbox membership giving access to retail discounts, a wellness platform for physical and mental health, and weekly free and boosted perks
  • Access to initiatives like Cycle to Work, Salary Sacrificed Gym partnerships and Electric Vehicle (EV) leasing

Full details are available on our careers site

Interview Process

Interviewing is a two way process and we want you to have the time and opportunity to get to know us, as much as we are getting to know you! Our interviews are conversational and we want to get the best from you, so come with questions and be curious. In general you can expect the below, following a chat with one of our Talent Team:

  • Stage 1 - 30 mins with one of the team
  • Stage 2 - Take home challenge
  • Stage 3 - 90 mins technical interview with two team members
  • Stage 3 - 45 min final with an executive and a member of the people team
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