About the job

Job summary

Are you eager to leverage your technical expertise for real-world impact? If so, this is an exciting opportunity to use and enhance your data engineering skills. Join us and play a key role in shaping the digital economy and make a positive difference to society.

About the CMA

We help people, businesses, and the UK economy by promoting competitive markets and tackling unfair behaviour. Our work is wide ranging, ambitious and often new and challenging.

You can read more about working at the CMA in our candidate pack.

Job description

The Data, Technology and Analytics (DaTA) unit is an established multidisciplinary team that brings together data engineers, data scientists, technologists, behavioural scientists, and other experts. You will join a team of about 20 Data Scientists and Engineers within the wider unit. As a Lead Data Engineer, you will be involved in designing and managing our analytical infrastructure and supporting the delivery of our most technically challenging projects. On one project, you may engage with tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Facebook and help to navigate vast data landscapes and understand how to regulate these digital powerhouses, and in another, you may develop a custom solution in AWS for data scientists to easily run ad-hoc scheduled jobs, or experiment with LLMs (AWS Bedrock and open-source models) and RAG systems as part of our digital transformation strategy.

In this pivotal role, you'll be at the forefront of developing data-driven tools and data pipelines that enable the CMA to analyse and regulate these influential platform businesses, and others. You'll build robust data infrastructure to support critical cases and market studies, putting machine learning models in production that detect anti-competitive behaviours, process the news and consumer complaints for our intelligence pipelines, and generally contribute to foster fair competition and protect consumers.

As a Lead Data Engineer, you'll play a vital role in crafting solutions to these issues, ensuring digital markets remain competitive and beneficial for consumers.

Person specification

It is essential that you can provide evidence and examples for each of the following selection criteria in your application. For tips on how to make the most your application, please have a look at our guidance document.

• Significant experience delivering data engineering and infrastructure projects as part of a team to agreed timelines and experience of shaping and leading technical projects. (Lead Criteria)
• Understanding of service architecture and design best practices, as well as practical experience developing solutions in the cloud (preferably AWS) and general knowledge of cloud services and infrastructure as code. (Lead Criteria)
• Significant experience working as a Data Engineer, DevOps Engineer, Infrastructure Engineer, Developer, or in similar roles.
• Knowledge of and interest in data engineering tools and techniques, modern machine learning methods and frameworks and experience using them.
• Strong coding skills in Python, and other relevant languages.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to write documentation, design documents and reports for a non-technical audience and to present technical topics in a straightforward and engaging way.
• Experience of working collaboratively with a variety of stakeholders, building excellent working relationships.

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £59,100, Competition & Markets Authority contributes £15,957 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

Things you need to know

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills.

The selection process will comprise of the sift (CV & application review), technical test and interview.

An initial sift based on lead criteria 1 and 2 may be held if a large number of applications are received.

If your application then progresses to a full sift, all elements of the essential criteria listed under Person Specification of the role profile will then be considered.

The sifting dates are 8th to 12th August 2024.

Candidates that pass the initial application sift will be invited to do a technical test – a 3 hour coding and data engineering test.

The coding test will take place week commencing 19th August 2024

Candidates that pass the technical test will then be invited to interview.

This will be a 45-60 minute panel interview, in which you will be asked behaviour-based questions based on the behaviours and experience specified in the role profile. It will also include some questions related to your response to the technical test.

Interviews will be held from week commencing 2nd September 2024

Interviews will be held on MS Teams/face to face in one of the CMA offices.

You will be notified via email to log-in to your Civil Service Account to book your interview slot. You will then be sent an email with full details of your arrangements for interview.

Reasonable adjustments

We want to make sure no one is at a disadvantage during our recruitment process because of a disability, condition, or impairment. To assist you with this, we will reduce or remove any barriers where possible and provide additional support where appropriate.

If you need a change to be made so that you can make your application, you should complete the “Assistance required” section in the “Additional requirements” page of your application form to tell us what changes or help you might need during the recruitment process.

For example, you may need wheelchair access at interview, or if you are deaf, a Language Service Professional. You might also require additional time to complete a timed assessment or a sign language interpreter to support with the relaying of information.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window). The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria. The Civil Service also offers a Redeployment Interview Scheme to civil servants who are at risk of redundancy, and who meet the minimum requirements for the advertised vacancy.