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About the Role

This role is part of the Integration team – part of Data Management (DM) team – which builds the enterprise data warehouse from the Data Lake. The OU is going through a vast transformation programme to migrate its data capability to the cloud and build trust in the data as well as to transform the student digital experience through a test and learn approach.

The role holder will have a wide range of technical skills, fully mastering ETL techniques and system analysis using industry standard tools. Additionally, the role holder will manage key stakeholders, collaborate on business solutions and strategic analyses with teams across the university and build customer relationships, to ensure our Enterprise Data Warehouse delivers insight and value.

The role holder will adhere to policies and procedural guidelines and contribute to discussions to improve them when appropriate.

Key Responsibilities

Systems analysis and development

• In consultation with other stakeholders, develop and disseminate agreed business rules
• Analysis required to design efficient and easily maintainable processes delivering an Enterprise Data Warehouse which addresses a wide range of information needs
• Analysis of business requirements to design and build a data model that will deliver to analytical and reporting products
• Analysis of source systems and business processes to evaluate the data against the analytical and reporting data requirements
• Provide coding support to the team, contributing to the development of skills
• Champion common approaches such as re-usable code, definitions templates, etc. to improve the standardisation and transparency of code
• Apply appropriate project management and systems development methodologies
• Investigate new techniques to improve the processing and quality of MI data
• Ensuring that any data transformations and data models are build meeting the data governance and protection policies

Systems maintenance

• Maintain and enhance all aspects of the solution focused integration platform
• Update systems to take account of changes in requirements or operational data and systems
• Liaise with stakeholders on operational data extracts
• In collaboration with data management and data governance, ensure tools are in place to help making the warehouse a transparent and responsive source of information and integrate the use of these tools into standard working methods
• Maintain documentation to agreed standards

Projects

• Contribute analytical, programming and systems expertise to DSA and collaborative projects
• Contribute to the delivery of the University’s Data Warehouse, specifically in the provision of the integration of data and provision of the enterprise data model

Future developments

• Identify opportunities and developments of new big data and cloud-based analytics infrastructure capabilities within MS Azure in collaboration with IT and other units, using your expertise in end-to-end processes within the Integration team

Line management of staff

• Manage workload and priorities
• Set objectives and identify development needs

About You

Essential:

• Undergraduate degree (or equivalent) with strong engineering, mathematics or computing elements
• Significant experience in proactively reviewing processes and in identifying opportunities for improvement
• Aptitude for careful analysis and systems development
• Effective skills in implementing change
• Communication and presentation skills to clearly articulate business requirements and data issues
• Able to work under pressure to manage competing demands for time and to meet demanding deadlines
• Able to provide leadership in developing new approaches to the use of systems to meet information needs
• Able to work well within a team
• Able to develop, provide support and guidance to a team on DW analysts and developers on a range of system issues
• Substantial experience of building an Enterprise Data Warehouse with MS Azure or equivalent – ETL Architecture, ETL Mapping, ETL design, ETL development, batch design, data quality analysis
• Experience in a practical environment of Azure Data Lake, Data Warehouse (Synapse Analytics), Data Factory, Visual Studio and DevOps (repos, build and release) and SQL
• Experience of designing and developmenting of data models. (e.g. Kimball, Inmon)
• Perform Impact analysis for live issues and provide fixes in line with design principles and standards
• Experience of working on multiple projects management methodologies

Desirable:

• MS Azure Integration training or similar
• Experience of developing and maintaining MI systems to support decision making and management information needs
• Experience of working within IT release management frameworks
• Experience in data analysis tools such as Python/R, cloud-based data analytics expertise AWS, Big Data technologies–Hadoop/Spark, Data Viz/BI tools–SAS EG, SAS VA, Power BI
• Knowledge of Higher Education sector and data

Support with your application

If you have any questions, or need support or adjustments relating to your application, the recruitment process, or the role, please contact us on 01908 541111 or email careers@open.ac.uk quoting the advert reference number.

What's in it for you?

At The Open University, we offer a range of benefits to recognise and reward great work, alongside policies and flexible working that contribute towards a great work life balance. Get all the details of what benefits we offer by visiting our Staff Benefits page (clicking this link will open a new window).

Flexible working

We are open to discussions about flexible working. Whether it’s a job share, part time, compressed hours or another working arrangement. Please reach out to us to discuss what works best for you.

It is anticipated that a hybrid working pattern can be adopted for this role, where the successful candidate can work from home and the office. However, as this role is contractually aligned to our Milton Keynes office it is expected that some attendance in the office will be required when necessary and in response to business needs. We’d expect this to be on average 1-2 times per month.

Next steps in the Recruitment process

We anticipate that interviews for this role will be taking place during the week commencing 20 October 2025.

Early closing date notification

We may close this job advert earlier than the published closing date where a satisfactory number of applications are received. We would therefore encourage early applications.

How to apply

To apply for this role please submit the following documents:

• CV
• A supporting statement of up to 1000 words. You should set out in your statement why you are interested in the role and provide examples of where your skills and experience meet the required competencies for this role as detailed in the job description.

You can view your progress and application communications when you are logged into our recruitment system.  Please check your spam/junk folders if you do not receive associated email updates.