Job overview

As a Data Engineer , you will play a critical role at the intersection of healthcare, data, and innovation — transforming raw information into powerful insights that drive clinical excellence and operational efficiency.

You will be instrumental in ensuring the stability, security, and performance of our Federated Data Platform (FDP), enabling seamless, real-time decision-making across the organisation. Your work will directly support safer patient care, smarter resource planning, and system-wide improvements in population health outcomes.

Working collaboratively with fellow data engineers, analysts, clinicians, and operational leaders, you will design and deliver robust, scalable, and reusable data solutions. You’ll help shape the future of our analytics environment, bridging the technical and business worlds to ensure the right data reaches the right people — at the right time.

This is a strategic and hands-on role, where your expertise will drive:

• Continuous improvement in data architecture and pipelines

• Agile, insight-driven business intelligence delivery

• The development of scalable reporting tools aligned with our digital health vision

We’re looking for someone with a proactive mindset, a passion for impact, and a commitment to data as a catalyst for change. You’ll be a trusted technical partner and a key contributor to our evolving data strategy, ensuring that every insight has purpose — and every dataset has power.

Main duties of the job

1. Data Pipeline Development & Integration

• Design, build, and maintain robust, scalable, and secure data pipelines from multiple clinical and operational sources into the FDP 

2. Data Modelling & Ontology Management

• Develop and maintain semantic data models (e.g., ontologies in Palantir Foundry) that map complex healthcare concepts (patients, episodes, care settings) into usable analytics objects.

3. Federated Data Platform (FDP) Stewardship

• Monitor platform performance, data integrity, and lineage across Trusts or systems using FDP tools.

4. BI Strategy & Reporting Enablement

- Support and co-develop dashboards, reports, and self-service FDP tools in the platform (e.g., Contour).

5. Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement

• Partner with clinical, operational, and executive stakeholders to gather requirements and translate them into data products and decision-support tools.

6.  Data Quality & Continuous Improvement

• Proactively identify data quality issues, implement validation checks, and contribute to data quality frameworks.

• Provide  support for data access, pipeline failures, or performance issues in collaboration with IT and platform teams.

7. Knowledge Sharing & Capacity Building

• Mentor junior engineers and analysts in using the FDP tools and maintaining a high standard of data engineering practice.

• Keep abreast of emerging data technologies (e.g., FHIR APIs, LLMs. Pyspark for structured-unstructured blending, synthetic data).

Working for our organisation

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is one of England's top-performing and safest trusts. We operate two main acute hospital sites—Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and West Middlesex University Hospital—along with award-winning clinics across North West London.

Our nearly 7,500 staff care for a diverse population of 1.5 million, providing full clinical services, including maternity, A&E, and children’s services, plus specialist HIV and sexual health clinics. The Care Quality Commission rates us 'Good' in safety, effectiveness, care, and responsiveness, and 'Outstanding' in leadership and resource use.

We continually invest in our facilities, including a £30m expansion of critical care at Chelsea and Westminster and an £80m Ambulatory Diagnostic Centre at West Middlesex.

We are committed to equal opportunities and believe that diversity drives innovation and excellence. As part of our dedication to equity, we actively welcome applications from individuals from the global majority, veterans and underrepresented communities. We value the unique perspectives and experiences that diverse teams bring and are committed to creating an environment where all voices are heard, respected, and empowered to succeed."

If you haven’t heard from us within three weeks of the closing date, your application was likely unsuccessful. Employment is subject to a six-month probationary period.

Some roles may require weekend shifts at multiple sites