SC Cleared Azure Data Engineer - Remote - Inside IR35

About Us:

Solirius Reply, part of the Reply Group, is a technology consultancy and digital transformation partner that helps organisations solve complex challenges through strategy, design, engineering, and delivery.

We work closely with our clients to deliver secure, accessible, user-focused services that evolve with their needs. By combining deep technical expertise with people-centred design, we create solutions that deliver meaningful, lasting impact.

Our consultants partner directly with client teams, embedding into organisations to understand their goals, challenges, and users. This collaborative approach enables us to deliver tailored solutions that drive measurable outcomes across public and private sectors.

Past and present clients include the Ministry of Justice, Department for Education, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, UEFA, International Olympic Committee, and Mercedes-Benz. Our services span the full digital delivery life cycle, including architecture, engineering, delivery management, user-centred design, business analysis, data, DevOps, and AI.

We operate as a collaborative and inclusive organisation that empowers our people to take ownership, innovate, and develop their expertise. As an equal opportunities employer, we are committed to encouraging equality, diversity, and social mobility, while creating opportunities for our teams to work on meaningful projects that deliver lasting impact.

About You:

You are a motivated and adaptable professional with a strong analytical mindset and a passion for using technology to solve real-world problems. You enjoy working in collaborative, agile teams and take pride in delivering high-quality solutions that make a tangible impact. With strong communication skills and a consultative approach, you're comfortable engaging with clients, understanding their needs, and translating them into effective outcomes.

Role Overview:

We are seeking an experienced SC Cleared Azure Data Engineer to join a high-profile multi-disciplinary team delivering the Discovery and Alpha phases for a major central government data consolidation project.

The client is consolidating three Legacy data schemes across separate incumbent suppliers down to a single unified scheme and supplier.

Key Responsibilities:

Phase 1: Discovery

• Data Landscape Interrogation: Analyse, profile, and evaluate sample bulk exports and Legacy data schemas across three incumbent suppliers, identifying format mismatches, quality issues, and structural gaps.

• Current State Mapping: Map Legacy datasets and review current schemes to assess volumes, dependencies, and complexity for transitioning into a single unified model.

• Migration Strategy Formulation: Evaluate technical risk profiles and formulate evidence-based migration options.

• Target Architecture Assessment: Collaborate with technical leads to evaluate internal cloud storage options including Azure Databricks, Central Data Platform (CDP), and Common Data Store (CDS)- for security, performance, cost-efficiency, and scalability.

Phase 2: Alpha

• Modern Data Standard Co-Design: Replace schema with a modern, flexible data language, setting clear data quality, validation, and naming convention rules aligned with domain policies and stakeholder needs.

• Data Transfer & Pipeline Design: Compare Real Time automated updates against scheduled batch processing methods, defining standard data transfer protocols into core government systems.

• Re-Procurement Technical Guidance: Translate technical, architectural, and schema specifications into clear procurement and data requirements for future vendor contracts to prevent vendor lock-in.

• Cross-Government Integration: Design technical linkage models to explore data-joining opportunities between the core scheme and wider related public sector initiatives.

Core Skills & Experience:

• Security Clearance: Active UK Security Clearance (SC) is mandatory.

• Azure Data Ecosystem: Deep technical experience in Azure Data Factory (ADF), Azure Databricks, Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Blob Storage/Data Lake Storage Gen2 (ADLS), and SQL Database environments.

• Data Profiling & Analysis: Proven ability to interrogate unstructured, messy, or Legacy bulk datasets, identifying schema drifts, missing constraints, and anomaly patterns.

• Data Modeling & Architecture: Hands-on expertise in enterprise data modelling (Relational, Dimensional, Data Vault), schema design, and establishing standard data validation frameworks.

• Migration Strategy & ETL/ELT: Demonstrated background in defining migration pathways from multi-vendor Legacy platforms into cloud target architectures.

• Public Sector/Central Government Experience: Prior experience delivering projects following GDS (Government Digital Service) standards, particularly within Discovery and Alpha phases, is highly desirable.