Who are we?

Mistral Data

Mitral Data 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

We are looking for an experienced engineer to design and develop analytics solutions within the Rail AWS platform. This is a critical role within the team, with outstanding opportunity for future growth. The core technical work is database development on a cloud big data database platform (Amazon Redshift), but includes interfaces, data pipelines and ETL, as well as developing visualisations, and working with the various cloud services and analytics packages that provide these capabilities. The initial focus for the role will be working on a train service performance analytics solution, but the role will not be limited to this project, and there is room for growth across a range of projects and platforms – including Machine Learning and AI. The role will involve working with IT and business stakeholders to understand requirements, and working with users to ensure developments meet the business need.

Your main responsibilities will be:

Develop high quality solutions to meet business requirements:

• Design and develop end to end BI solutions
• Work with stakeholders and users to understand requirements
• Ensure compatibility with required analytics packages
• Produce analytic dashboards, according to user requirements
• Support user interrogation of the database, with documentation and consulting support
• Proactively identify and resolve issues, including performance and data quality problems
• Work with product and project managers to maintain roadmaps
• Identify potential datasources to meet user requirements, work with IT colleagues to develop robust and secure interfaces
• To own the integrity of the data within the platforms and ensure this is maintained
• Identify potential improvements in existing build
• Manage 3rd parties in the monitoring and support of the data feeds and platform to ensure SLAs are being adhered to
• To continually review security of the platform and ensure any new threats are addressed in a timely manner
• Ensure the platforms readily supports addition of interfaces and use cases as required
• To ensure a library of technical documentation is maintained and regularly updated

Additional Responsibilities

• Understand TOC and Rail industry systems and data and to advise and deliver solutions that take advantage of any of these data sources
• Work with the TOC functional leads to develop testing programmes for enhancements
• To assist the Rail Division technical team in sharing and developing best cloud practice and ensuring the platform takes advantage of relevant cloud services that improve the resilience, performance and cost of providing and supporting the platform
• Continually develop new cloud-based services skills within AWS and to share and influence others in to the proposed use of these services
• Assist the TOCs in helping them understand opportunities in their use of the platform

As a minimum, you will need to have:

• • • Required
      • Excellent knowledge and experience of SQL and database design and development
      • Excellent knowledge and experience of Business Intelligence data modelling
      • Excellent knowledge and experience of database housekeeping and tuning techniques
      • Strong experience working with cloud computing technologies, preferably AWS
      • Strong experience working with one or more cloud data warehouses (for example Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, Athena), and an in depth understanding of their architecture, and best practises for design
      • Strong knowledge of AWS services, including Redshift, S3, Lambda, Kinesis Streams, Kinesis Firehose
      • Strong coding experience, ideally working with Python
      • Good experience working with ETL tools
      • Experience with data visualisation tools such as Power BI, Quicksight or similar
      • Experience of testing and deployment processes
      • Experience of managing deployments to production environments
      • Experience working with analytical packages, and an understanding of how these integrate with data platforms
      • Understanding of broader cloud data services and capability
      • Organised self-starter and independent problem solver, with the confidence to make high-quality decisions
      • Self-motivated individual with demonstrated ability to follow through with project delivery
    
    

     

    • Desirable
      • Experience working with column store database such as Amazon Redshift
      • Experience working with a range of different interfaces
      • Experience working with statistical and data science languages and software packages
      • High level understanding of firewalls and networking
      • Service Management and change management
      • Rail specific knowledge about train operational data
      • Experience of using Atlassian suite – Jira, Confluence
      • Experience in AGILE working and sprint planning

Key Behaviours/Attributes

• Performance and delivery oriented
• Analytical mindset with a problem-solving aptitude
• Ability to communicate to a wide range of business audience, to ensure their requirements are understood and prioritised
• Willingness to confront and ask probing questions to understand colleagues needs
• Good written and verbal communication skills
• Operate effectively in unfamiliar environments, remaining calm under pressure and agile in approach
• Proactive and positive attitude
• Transparent and open style
• Excited by a challenge and enthusiastic about developing the wider team
• Takes responsibility for personal objectives
• Desire to succeed!

We all belong at Mistral Data. 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/