Data & Development Manager
Manchester – Hybrid working (3 days a week in the office / 2 days remote)
Position Summary
Our client is a fast-moving organisation based in central Manchester looking to hire a Data & Development Manager to lead a team of data engineers and software developers, overseeing the design, delivery, and governance of core applications, data platforms, and automation solutions.
This is a hands-on leadership role blending technical capability with team management, responsible for ensuring the quality, reliability, and scalability of development practices across the business. A strong background in data engineering (with an understanding of software development) is highly desirable, alongside a willingness to embrace AI technologies and modern cloud-native patterns.
What We Offer
- Basic salary of up to £65k plus benefits
- 10% bonus
- A high-impact leadership role driving modern engineering practices across data and software
- Opportunity to shape the organisation’s future-state data platform, DevOps standards, and AI readiness
Key Responsibilities
Team & Delivery Leadership
- Lead and mentor a team of software developers and data engineers, providing hands-on technical guidance and performance management.
- Oversee the delivery of scalable, secure, and maintainable solutions across the organisation’s software and data platforms.
- Define and enforce engineering best practices, coding standards, and robust development governance.
Platform & Pipeline Ownership
- Own and optimise DevOps pipelines, CI/CD processes, and environment management across Azure.
- Manage deployment governance, version control workflows, and release cycles.
- Work closely with architects, analysts, and product owners to ensure solutions adhere to security, performance, and compliance standards.
- Embed Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) practices to support scalable and repeatable deployments.
Technical Development & Architecture
- Contribute to solution design across Azure, including Azure Functions, Logic Apps, Data Factory/Fabric pipelines, and storage solutions.
- Support the transition toward Microsoft Fabric, modern data engineering patterns, and unified analytics environments.
- Ensure reliable data models, pipelines, and integration services supporting analytics, operational platforms, and core applications.
AI & Future State Enablement
- Collaborate with AI teams to embed RAG pipelines, vector stores, and LLM-based applications into business processes.
- Ensure engineering readiness for modern AI workloads, including data quality, observability, and secure deployment patterns.
- Contribute to the development of internal AI governance and deployment standards.
Low-Code & Automation Support
- Provide oversight and integration guidance for low-code solutions (Power Apps, Logic Apps, Power Automate) within governed frameworks.
- Support the development of reusable components and APIs to extend low-code platforms safely and scalably.
Required Skills & Experience
- Strong experience in data engineering (pipelines, ETL/ELT, data modelling, orchestration) with exposure to software development (APIs, services, applications).
- Leadership experience managing multi-disciplinary technical teams.
- Hands-on experience across Azure services such as Azure Functions, Logic Apps, Azure DevOps, Data Factory, Azure SQL, event-driven architecture, and resource governance.
- Strong proficiency in Python for engineering, automation, or application development.
- Experience designing and operating DevOps pipelines, CI/CD processes, and development governance frameworks.
- Strong understanding of modern cloud architecture, integration patterns, and security best practices.
- Confident stakeholder management skills, with the ability to translate business needs into well-engineered solutions.
Desirable Skills
- Experience with Microsoft Fabric (or a strong interest in adopting it).
- Exposure to AI / LLM solution development (RAG, embeddings, vector databases, inference pipelines).
- Experience integrating low-code platforms (Power Apps, Power Automate) into enterprise systems securely.
- Familiarity with modern development frameworks such as .NET or JavaScript/TypeScript, and API-first design principles.