Data Engineer

The OVO Group’s purpose is to drive progress towards net zero carbon living. To reach Plan Zero, we need everyone to come together - not just as customers buying energy, but as members with a common goal. As part of this ambitious plan, our goal is to become the ‘Best Employer in the UK’ by 2030. If you think you could be the talent we’re looking for, then come and join the adventure!

We launched in 2009 with a mission to change energy for the better. Since then, we’ve welcomed over a million members, planted a million trees, and set our sights on helping save the planet.

As a Group, we’re working to become a net zero carbon business by 2030, while helping our OVO Energy members halve their carbon footprints at the same time. 

Green energy and technology are great tools to fight the climate crisis with. But it’s people power that will rewrite history. 

So we’re building a zero carbon team inside and out. Of people who share our values, feel inspired by our mission, and want to make change happen. When you work for OVO, it’s not just a job. It’s the work of a lifetime. And we want the sharpest minds to help.

Up for the challenge? 

Where in the world of OVO will I be working? 

Following OVO’s acquisition of the SSE Retail Energy company earlier this year, the two companies are working hard to integrate their operations. Essential to this is the integration and rationalisation of their technical systems and data processing.

As a Software Engineer you will work closely with OVO and SSE Product, Tech, Data and Analytics, and Data Platform teams. You will be tasked with identifying the right SSE datasources, mapping these into OVO’s data model and then implementing solutions using streaming technologies to transform and publish data onto OVO’s Data Platform for use by downstream operational and analytical teams.

This role is fundamental to realising solutions that deliver the successful integration of the two organisations, in line with OVO’s Data Strategy.

For more information on some of the technical challenges with integrating OVO and SSE’s data platforms why not read the excellent blog post written by Katie Russell entitled Eating the Data Elephant.

What will I be doing? 

• Designing and Implementing solutions that extract high volumes of data from a wide variety of source systems and making it available on OVO’s streaming data platform.
• Working with technologies including Kafka and Kafka Connect to stream data into Kafka as well as Scala, Kafka Streams, KSQL and microservice architectures to process and transform data streams.
• You will form part of an Agile development team responsible for delivering high quality solutions iteratively into OVO’s production systems using XP and CI/CD best practices.
• Helping to ensure good engineering practices are adopted and used within the team.
• Working closely with stakeholders to understand the various source systems including details of their interfaces, data models and capabilities in order to design appropriate solutions to extract and transform the data.
• Assisting in the evaluation of appropriate tools and technologies that will shape the design of the SSE / OVO data migration and integration strategy.

Is this the job for me? 

• Experience designing and building large-scale streaming data pipelines that utilize streaming technologies (e.g. Kafka Streams, Amazon Kinesis or similar) with an emphasis on the sourcing and transformation of data is essential.
• You are a software engineer with an interest in the data domain (data modelling, data transformation, etc.).
• You are comfortable working in an agile development environment that employs continuous integration and continuous delivery best practices, and have experience of pair programming, BDD/TDD, CI/CD and deployment strategies.
• You are a strong advocate for engineering best practices including unit testing, integration testing, static code analysis and code reviews.
• You are motivated by fast-paced environments where teams have high degrees of autonomy.
• Experience with Scala would be an advantage but if you have an appetite to learn new technologies and a drive for continual improvement we’d love to talk to you.

From us you’ll get* 

• 4% of your salary to spend on flexible lifestyle benefits
• 5% matched employer contribution to your pension
• 25 days holiday + 1 for your birthday
• An annual discretionary bonus
• And many more... 

(*) Please note that certain benefits kick-in once you have passed probation which can be up to 6 months after your start date.

We want the best people 

At OVO, we empower our people to have choice around where and when they work - flexible working arrangements can be discussed for all of our roles. Please speak to the Talent Acquisition team for more info.

We’re keen to meet people with varied backgrounds - our view is the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be. We want to build teams which represent a variety of experiences, perspectives and skills, and we recognise talent on the basis of merit and potential.

We understand some people may not apply for jobs unless they tick every box. If you're excited about joining us and think you have much of what we're looking for, even if you're not 100% sure… we'd love to hear from you.

Learn more about working in the OVO family of companies on our careers page and Glassdoor. We’re also delighted to have received a Top Employers certificate in 2018, 2019 and 2020!