Who are we?

South Western Railway (SWR) operates over 1,500 services each weekday across the network and employs more than 5,000 people. We provide easy and convenient mobility, connecting people and communities in South West London, southern counties of England, and the Isle of Wight.

Join our team and help us continue to improve quality of life, by bringing people together to get the most out of life.

SWR is part of FirstGroup, the largest rail operator in the UK and second largest bus operator in the UK outside London. FirstGroup operates services throughout the UK and Ireland, with over 30,000 employees providing services that make travel smoother and life easier.  FirstGroup works hard to reduce its impact on the environment, introducing cleaner and more environmentally responsible methods of transport.

About the job

Transforming raw data into publishable datasets to support the UK Rail Industry's Open Data goals, and creating actionable datasets to support business decision making, and improving business knowledge within SWR.

Your main responsibilities will be:

• Build, maintain, and optimize data infrastructure, including cloud-based platforms, databases, and data processing frameworks
• Design and implement data models to effectively store and manage large volumes of diverse data. Build and maintain data warehouses and data lakes to support advanced analytics and reporting.
• Develop and maintain robust data pipelines to efficiently extract, transform, and load (ETL) data from various sources, including operational systems, ticketing platforms, and external data providers
• Ensure data integrity and accuracy by establishing and enforcing data quality standards. Develop data validation and cleansing processes to maintain data reliability.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to define data governance policies and procedures. Implement data security and privacy measures to protect sensitive information and comply with GDPR
• Work closely with data scientists, analysts, and business stakeholders to understand their data requirements and deliver solutions that meet their needs
• Identify and implement performance improvements for data pipelines and queries. Optimize data storage and retrieval processes
• Keep abreast of the latest data engineering technologies and trends to drive innovation and improve efficiency

As a minimum, you will need to have:

• Deep domain knowledge of data warehousing and data modelling concepts
• Knowledge and experience of working with AWS and/or Azure cloud data platforms
• Experience with data engineering tools and technologies linked to those platforms (e.g. Azure functions/ADF/Databricks/Kinesis/Kafka/Glue/Lambda/API/SASL)
• Strong proficiency in SQL and Python desirable
• Experience with machine learning and artificial intelligence desirable
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills to effectively work with key stakeholders and suppliers across our data estate (e.g. RDG, DfT and Mistral Data Ltd, DfTO TOCs and others)
• Have a high attention to detail, completing work to a high level of accuracy, maintaining focus, with the ability to prioritize workloads and work to challenging deadlines
• Demonstrates thoughtful and efficient design without over engineering solutions
• Proactive and with a drive for continuous improvement
• Knowledge of rail commercial or operational systems (e.g. Lennon MOIRA, ORCATS, Cubic, BT MND) desirable

We discourage the use of AI in applications. If you are using AI in your application, please only use it as a supporting tool. If your application is entirely written by AI, it will not stand out, hurting your chances of progressing.  

About the location

South Western Railways HQ is based on the 4th Floor at South Bank Central, a stone's throw from the River Thames and a 10 minute walk from our busiest station, Waterloo. It is local to many well-known attractions, restaurants and retail facilities and is easily accessible by public transport. 

Working pattern

Working an average of 37 hours per week over 5 days 

Monday - Friday 

The Reward

In return we offer a competitive salary and a variety of valuable benefits, including:

• Free duty and leisure travel on SWR services for employees
• Free leisure travel for spouse/partner and dependants (criteria dependent)
• 75% discount on many other train operating companies
• Full training and support with development
• Large range of exclusive retail offers
• Excellent pension scheme

We all belong at SWR. FirstGroup's vision is to provide an inclusive environment for all colleagues, across its group of businesses, ensuring all candidates have an equal opportunity to access meaningful employment.

We value our differences such as age, gender, LGBTQIA+, ethnicity, religion, and disability. We maintain a zero tolerance towards any form of prejudice towards our colleagues, customers, and future talent.

We celebrate and encourage diversity of thought, progressive ways of working and seeing all our colleagues grow and thrive.

We review all roles and job descriptions to ensure they are accessible and, where possible, we support and provide flexible working options; we recommend that you refer to each vacancy description for further details.

If you require additional support to complete your application due to a disability or neurodivergent condition, for example, dyslexia, dyspraxia, or autism, please follow the links below.  We encourage you to share any additional needs you may require so we can provide a fair and equal process for all who apply.

https://exceptionalindividuals.com/neurodiversity/

https://www.healthassured.org/blog/neurodiversity/