Senior Data Engineer

BACKGROUND
Over the past 90 years, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has developed unparalleled expertise in responding to emergencies and helping uprooted communities to rebuild. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC offers lifesaving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war or disaster. The IRC is on the ground in more than 40 countries, providing emergency relief, relocating refugees and rebuilding lives in the wake of disaster.

The IRC is committed to a culture of bold leadership, innovation in all aspects of our work, creative partnerships and, most crucially, accountability to those we serve. The IRC is a tireless advocate for the most vulnerable.

IRC UK
IRC UK is part of the IRC global network, which has its global headquarters in New York. Our team in the UK works to raise profile, deliver policy and practice change, and increase funding to help restore health, safety, education, economic wellbeing and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster. Since 2021, IRC UK has also provided integration services directly to refugees in England.

The Purpose of the Role

The External Relations (ER) department was created in February 2020 and is comprised of 3 main but complementary functions: Private fundraising, Communications and Policy & Advocacy. The ER department is three years into a 5-year ground-breaking and ambitious global strategy that will improve IRC’s ability to ‘punch above its weight’ in private income, advocacy and brand awareness. The main objective of the department is to enable this organization of more than 12,000 staff to have the resources needed to continue serving 18 million people worldwide in places affected by war and disaster, shape the humanitarian sector by influencing key policies and reforms, and build and grow IRC’s reputation. 

We are seeking a skilled and versatile Data Engineer to join our dynamic analytics team, which includes data scientists and analysts. In this role, you will leverage your expertise in both analytics engineering and machine learning operations (ML Ops), as well as infrastructure design and deployment, to build, maintain, and optimize the systems and tools that support our data pipelines, machine learning workflows, and business intelligence reporting.

You will play an active role in scaling IRC’s internal data capabilities as the volume and complexity of our data and ML models grow and business needs evolve. 

Major Responsibilities:

• Support the entire workflow of the ER data model: data pipeline development, ELT performance, timely loading of data sets, and maintenance of data models via the use of monitoring, testing, and automation.
• Collaborate with analysts, data scientists, and ER stakeholders to understand the opportunities to develop well-defined, integrated, production-quality, and re-usable data models in SQL using dbt, ensuring data quality.
• Collaborate with data scientists to build and automate end-to-end ML pipelines, from data preparation to model deployment and monitoring, including designing, implementing, and maintaining MLflow-based workflows for model tracking, versioning, and deployment.
• Apply software engineering practices when creating new data models to ensure data quality & standardization across our pipelines, and ML and BI tools.
• Employ comprehensive testing and documentation practices.
• Drive clear requirements documentation and contribute to code review.
• Identify and execute internal process improvements, including re-designing infrastructure for greater scalability and automating manual processes.
• Act as a technical expert to the rest of the ER analytics team to mentor analysts and improve analytics engineering as a practice across all ER analytics (query development, extending data models, software development practices, PowerBI data modeling governance, ML Ops).
• Contribute to continuously clarifying, simplifying, and otherwise improving the conceptual foundations of ER Analytics data models; develop and maintain conceptual data model artifacts including readme-level documentation, model diagrams, prototypes, change notices, et cetera,
• Collaborate with engineering team, analysts, and business users to implement new ELT pipelines, data infrastructure improvements, and integration of new ER and cross-IRC data sets and other data consumption assets.
• Partner with the Associate Director, Analytics Engineering to evaluate data stack improvements.
• Support of other analytics tasks as needed

PERSON SPECIFICATION

Demonstrated Skills and Competencies:

• Curiosity to explore complex and ambiguous problems and deliver structured analytics solutions **
• 4+ years working in the field of data and analytics **
• At least 2+ years of professional experience manipulating large scale data, using both Python and SQL (nested data structure manipulation, windowing functions, query optimization, data partitioning techniques) **
• Strong experience with data pipeline management technologies (e.g. Airflow, dbt), dependency checking, schema design, and dimensional data modeling **
• Strong experience with ML model management tools, such as ML Flow **
• 2+ years of experience with cloud-based data warehouses (Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift, Azure) **
• Knowledgeable and passionate about the “modern data stack”  **
• Strong adherence to data ops best practices, including version control (e.g., GitHub), and data testing **
• Independent worker with strong attention to detail & commitment to a high standard of work product **
• Ability to communicate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and translate business needs into technical requirements. **
• Desire to work in a multi-cultural environment and collaborate with people from different backgrounds and experiences **

Nice-to-Haves

• Familiarity with Salesforce or similar CRM technology
• Experience owning dbt in a high-growth org, including deploying capabilities such as utils, packages, tests, snapshots, and incremental tables
• Experience in Snowflake and Databricks
• Exposure to Microsoft BI tooling: PowerBI, Power Query and, DAX/MDX scripting language
• Understanding of infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CloudFormation) and CI/CD pipelines for ML/AI workflows.
• Experience with distributed data processing frameworks such as Apache Spark or Apache Kafka is a plus.

Working Environment:

·Standard office working environment.

·This role may require working remotely full or part time and part time remote employees may be required to share workspace.  

Criteria in the Person Specification marked with ** are the minimum criteria in line with our commitments under the Disability Confident Employer Scheme in the UK.

UK based candidates who state that they have a disability and meet these criteria will be invited to interview.

Standard Responsibilities

Promote and actively participate in initiatives and efforts to build team engagement, inclusion and cohesion in IRC London office

Foster ongoing learning, honest dialogue and reflection to strengthen safeguarding and to promote IRC values and adherence to IRC policies

Standard Job Requirements

The IRC and IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in IRC Way - Standards for Professional Conduct.  These are Integrity, Service, Equality and Accountability.  In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Beneficiary Protection from Exploitation and Abuse, Child Safeguarding, Anti Workplace Harassment, Fiscal Integrity, and Anti-Retaliation.

Related standard content:

IRC strives to build a diverse and inclusive team at all levels who as individuals, and as a group, embody our culture statement creating a working environment characterized by critical reflection, power sharing, debate, and objectivity for us to achieve our aspirations as a team and deliver the best possible services to our clients. 

UK:

Narrowing the Gender Gap: The IRC is committed to narrowing the gender gap in leadership positions. We offer benefits that provide an enabling environment for women to participate in our workforce including flexible hours (when possible), enhanced maternity/adoption leave and pay and gender-sensitive security protocols.

Candidates must have the right to work in the UK.

The deadline for application is 8th June 2025

IRC UK strives to be an equal opportunities employer. IRC UK is committed to equality of opportunity and to non-discrimination for all job applicants and employees, and we seek to ensure we achieve diversity in our workforce regardless of gender, race, religious beliefs, nationality, ethnic/national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status or disability.

IRC UK welcomes applications from all candidates, including underrepresented groups and refugees who have the right to work in the UK.

IRC UK will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided with reasonable adjustments to participate in the job application and/or interview process, and for essential job functions if appointed to a role. Please contact us if you may need such adjustments. 

Recruitment Process

The process for this role will be as follows

·Screening call online

·First round panel interview online – including assessment / test

·Second round panel interview – online – including presentation task

·Final role and expectations alignment call with Senior Director, online

If you have any questions or need assistance with the online recruitment process, please contact the IRC UK HR team at applications@rescue-uk.org