Data Engineering Strategy Lead

About the job you're considering

Our Data Portfolio is experiencing sustained growth driven by significant new contract wins and demand that continues to exceed original forecasts. To maintain delivery excellence, reduce operational risk, strengthen engineering leadership, and build the capability required for future growth, we are seeking a Data Engineering Strategy Lead to shape and lead our engineering strategy for new and emerging work across the portfolio.

This role will play a key part in shaping the future direction of the Data & Intelligence Portfolio by assessing new, changing, and emerging work and defining the most effective strategic response. It will bring clarity to complex or ambiguous demand by understanding the nature of the work, identifying the right people and stakeholders to involve, and determining the technical, delivery, and leadership capabilities required for successful delivery. The role will translate this understanding into a clear roadmap of future portfolio requirements, supporting informed decisions around capability, investment, and workforce planning.

The role sits at the intersection of business growth, workforce strategy, capability development and engineering leadership.

Hybrid working: The places that you work from day to day will vary according to your role, your needs, and those of the business;

it will be a blend of Company offices, client sites, and your home; noting that you will be unable to work at home 100% of the

time.

If you are successfully offered this position, you will go through a series of pre-employment checks, including:

identity, nationality (single or dual) or immigration status, employment history going back 3 continuous years, and unspent

criminal record check (known as Disclosure and Barring Service)

Your role

The purpose of this role is to help the Data & Intelligence Portfolio assess, shape, and define the right strategic approach for new, changing, and emerging work. The role will bring structure to ambiguous demand by understanding what the work involves, identifying who needs to be engaged, and defining the technical, delivery, leadership, and capability skills required to deliver it successfully. It will translate these requirements into a clear roadmap of portfolio demand, skills, investment priorities, and future capability needs, while continuing to provide strong technical leadership across data engineering, architecture, testing, analytics, operations, automation, AI-assisted engineering, DevOps, and cloud-first delivery. The role will also support the growth of engineering capability across permanent, contractor, graduate, apprentice, and partner talent, ensuring the portfolio has the right skills, standards, leadership, and communities in place to meet current delivery commitments and future growth.

Your skills and experience

Engineering Strategy & Capability Planning

• Identify and shape opportunities for growth, including new work, capability development, bid support and stronger use of data engineering capability across the wider Insights &

Data Practice.

• Clarify what new work involves, who needs to be engaged, and what technical, delivery, and leadership skills are required to deliver it successfully.
• Translate future work and capability requirements into a clear roadmap of portfolio demand, skills, and investment priorities.
• Define and maintain the Data Portfolio engineering capability requirements and identify capability gaps across the portfolio.
• Support across permanent, contractor, graduate, apprentice, and partner talents.

Technical Leadership

• Provide leadership across engineering capability areas including:
• Data Integration
• Data Engineering
• Data Architecture
• Data Quality & Testing
• Data Analytics, Reporting and Visualization
• Operations & Support
• Establish standards, best practices, and engineering guardrails.
• Drive adoption of modern engineering approaches, automation, AI-assisted engineering, DevOps, and cloud-first delivery models.
• Promote engineering excellence, innovation, and continuous improvement across the portfolio.

Community & Talent Development

• Mentor senior engineers and future technical leaders.
• Drive a culture of continuous learning and professional development.
• Support succession planning for critical engineering leadership roles.

Stakeholder Management

• Act as a trusted advisor to senior portfolio and practice leadership.
• Bring the right stakeholders together early to assess emerging work, shape the right solution, and agree the skills, leadership, and capability needed.
• Influence investment decisions relating to engineering capability growth.
• Work closely with Delivery Managers and Chief Engineers to address emerging demand and risks.

Essential Experience

• Extensive experience in Data Engineering, Data Architecture, or Data Technology leadership roles.
• Experience operating across large-scale data programmes or portfolios.
• Proven ability to assess ambiguous or emerging demand, define the strategic response, and translate this into a practical roadmap of portfolio requirements.
• Experience building and growing technical communities.
• Experience influencing senior stakeholders and leadership teams.
• Demonstrable leadership of engineering transformation, modernisation, or capability improvement initiatives.

Technical Knowledge

Strong understanding of multiple areas across the Data Engineering ecosystem, including:

• Modern data Integration and ETL/ELT platforms
• SQL and Data Modelling
• Cloud Data Platforms and Services
• DevOps, CI/CD and automation approaches
• Data Architecture and Data Engineering best practices
• AI-enabled engineering approaches
• Data Governance and Data Quality principles

Leadership Skills

The successful candidate will demonstrate:

• Strategic thinking
• Technical leadership
• Commercial awareness
• Consultancy and stakeholder management
• Influencing and negotiation skills

Your security clearance

To be successfully appointed to this role, it is a requirement to obtain Security Check (SC) clearance.

To obtain SC clearance, the successful applicant must have resided continuously within the United Kingdom for the last 5 years, along with other criteria and requirements.

Throughout the recruitment process, you will be asked questions about your security clearance eligibility such as, but not limited to, country of residence and nationality.

Some posts are restricted to sole UK Nationals for security reasons; therefore, you may be asked about your citizenship in the application process.

What does ‘Get The Future You Want ‘ mean for you?

You’ll be bringing your unique skills and perspectives to the team, inspiring and taking inspiration from your teammates as you unlock value in everything you do. You’ll be joining a professional community of experts, who have got your back and will support you, every step of the way.

You’d be joining an accredited Great Place to work for Wellbeing in 2024. Employee wellbeing is vitally important to us as an organisation. We see a healthy and happy workforce a critical component for us to achieve our organisational ambitions.

To help support wellbeing we have trained ‘Mental Health Champions’ across each of our business areas, and we have invested in wellbeing apps such as Thrive and Peppy.

Why you should consider Capgemini

Growing clients’ businesses while building a more sustainable, more inclusive future is a tough ask. When you join Capgemini, you’ll join a thriving company and become part of a

collective of free-thinkers, entrepreneurs and industry experts. We find new ways technology can help us reimagine what’s possible. It’s why, together, we seek out opportunities

that will transform the world’s leading businesses, and it’s how you’ll gain the experiences and connections you need to shape your future. By learning from each other every day,

sharing knowledge, and always pushing yourself to do better, you’ll build the skills you want. You’ll use your skills to help our clients leverage technology to innovate and grow

their business. So, it might not always be easy, but making the world a better place rarely is.

About Capgemini

Capgemini is a global business and technology transformation partner, helping organisations to accelerate their dual transition to a digital and sustainable world, while creating tangible impact for enterprises and society. It is a responsible and diverse group of 350,000 team members in more than 50 countries. With its strong over 55-year heritage, Capgemini is trusted by its clients to unlock the value of technology to address the entire breadth of their business needs. It delivers end-to-end services and solutions leveraging strengths from strategy and design to engineering, all fuelled by its market leading capabilities in AI, generative AI, cloud and data, combined with its deep industry expertise and partner ecosystem. The Group reported 2024 global revenues of €22.1 billion.