Lead Business Intelligence Developer IT Services 55999 Grade 8

Position Details

Application Services IT Services

Location: University of Birmingham Edgbaston Birmingham UK

Full time starting salary is normally in the range 47389 to 56535 with potential progression once in post to 63606

Full Time Permanent

Closing date: 19 February 2026


Our offer to you

People are at the heart of what we are and do.

The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years and we are equally proud to be recognised as a leading global university. We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond support them to succeed and celebrate their success.

We are committed to helping the people who work here to develop through our sector-leading Birmingham Professional programme which provides all professional services staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential. With almost 5000 professional services jobs in a wide-range of functions in Edgbaston and in our campus in Dubai there are plenty of opportunities for you to be able to develop your career at the University.

We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas innovation and debate. We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are and how we work.

Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University and depending on the role we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements. We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible addition you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year one paid day a year for volunteering occupational sick pay and a pension scheme. We also have three high quality subsidised day nurseries.

The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus including main bus routes and a train station on site. On campus we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool shops places to eat and drink our own art gallery museum and botanical gardens.

Find out more about the benefits of working for the University of Birmingham

Background

The University of Birmingham is a global institution working within a diverse and vibrant City offering an inspiring education to our students and undertaking critically important research. We are a place of open critical thinking and the creation sharing and dissemination of knowledge. Professional Services put students at the heart of all they do and enable an exceptional educational experience. They provide outstanding support to our researchers and help the University to grow its influence regionally nationally and globally. They ensure the Universitys resources are used wisely manage and improve the infrastructure which sits at the heart of the institution and support decisions to be made quickly and based on sound evidence. Our Birmingham Professional programme operates across the University supporting colleagues to network and collaborate offering opportunities to learn and develop contributing to the delivery of the Universitys objectives and helping everyone to understand the broader context within which we work.

Department overview

The role of IT Services is to ensure that the University of Birmingham community has access to responsive resilient secure and accessible systems and support. Our technologies enable our students staff researchers visitors and partners to confidently and creatively use digital services technology and data for the benefit of their learning teaching research or work.

IT Services are building a culture of innovation collaboration openness and inclusivity and we apply the principles of customer focus and continuous improvement to everything we do. We want to attract outstanding inspirational and talented people support them to succeed and celebrate their success. Our IT Services division has an active People and Culture network and Women in IT group bi-annual making IT happen awards recognition programme and Social Committee which arranges regular activities and events for colleagues.
With a new Digital Strategy this is an exciting opportunity to join the team making IT happen at the University of Birmingham.

Role Summary

The University has a requirement for a Lead Business Intelligence (BI) Developer who has significant skills and experience in Cloud data warehousing and systems analysis/design.

We are looking for a Data Warehouse Engineer with extensive experience of Snowflake Cloud based data platform. The primary focus of this role will be the development of the Snowflake data warehouse environment working within our Data Team and will include using ETL and Modelling tools and Tableau/Power BI for reporting and data visualisations.

As the ideal candidate you will be adept at working with large data sets to develop advanced scalable Data Warehouse solutions from end-to-end. The University is still at the early stages of building a Cloud based Data Warehouse based on Snowflake hosted on MS Azure. The basic architecture has been established and various system components talk to each other but there is still a lot to do and this will be a huge opportunity for the right person to take ownership of the Data Platform working within the Data Team and delivering our Data Strategy. You will be a hands-on Data Engineer who thrives on working in a varied and challenging environment and will use your technical knowledge to advice on how we are ingesting data what they are ingesting and how the Data Team are using insights to drive key business decision making. You must have strong experience using a variety of data architecture/data modelling techniques. You must also have a proven ability to design develop and implement advanced data warehousing solutions and be comfortable working with a wide range of stakeholders and functional teams to understand business needs.

This is a hybrid role with 2 days on campus each week.

Main Duties

Systems design
Specifies and designs large or complex business intelligence solutions.
Selects appropriate software design standards methods and tools consistent with agreed enterprise and solution architectures and ensures they are applied effectively.
Reviews others systems design to ensure selection of appropriate technology efficient use of resources and integration of multiple systems and technology.
Contributes to policy for selection of architecture components.
Evaluates and undertakes impact analysis on major design options and assesses and manages associated risks.
Ensures that the system design balances functional service quality security and systems management requirements.

Programming/data lifecycle development
Contributes to local or team-based standards for BI programming tools and techniques including security guidelines and the selection of appropriate development methods.
Advises on application of standards and methods and ensures compliance.
Takes technical responsibility for all stages and/or iterations in a Data development project providing method specific technical advice and guidance to project stakeholders.
Assigns work packages monitors performance and manages change control dynamically to optimise productivity.
Provides advice guidance and assistance to less experienced colleagues as required.

Software release and deployment
Assesses and analyses release components.
Provides input to scheduling.
Carries out the builds and tests in coordination with testers and component specialists maintaining and administering the tools and methods manual or automatic - and ensuring where possible information exchange with configuration management.
Ensures release processes and procedures are maintained.

Business intelligence methods and tools
Provides expertise and support on use of methods and tools.
Emerging technology monitoring
Maintains awareness of opportunities provided by new technology to address challenges or to enable new ways of working.
Within own sphere of influence works to further organisational goals by the study and use of emerging technologies and products.
Contributes to briefings and presentations about their relevance and potential value to the organisation.

Technology leadership and innovation
Provides organisational leadership and guidelines to promote the development and exploitation of business intelligence solutions in the organisation.
Recognises potential strategic application of business intelligence development capabilities.
Initiates and manages investigation and development of innovative methods practices and technology to the benefit of the organisation.
Plays an active and dynamic role in improving the interface between all interested parties facilitating knowledge flow to enable sharing and development of creative ideas.

Relationship and stakeholder management
Implements stakeholder engagement including handling of problems and issues to resolution (taking ownership) and producing corrective actions and lessons learned where applicable.
Uses feedback from customers and stakeholders to help measure effectiveness of stakeholder management.
Helps develop and enhance customer and stakeholder relationships.

Other duties
Actively manages equality diversity and inclusion through monitoring and evaluation and actively challenging unacceptable behaviour.
Supports the Universitys sustainability agenda through resource efficient working.
Any other duties commensurate with the grade.

Person Specification

Educated to degree level or equivalent qualification plus substantial work experience in a relevant technical/scientific and/or management/supervisory role in a specialist area. A higher degree may also be held. Where no equivalent qualification is held a proven track record of extensive and substantial work experience in a series of progressively more demanding and relevant roles will be required.
Proven technical specialist knowledge and understanding in a relevant technical area (specialists will require advanced technical expertise).
Snowflake certified with relevant hands on experience.
ETL tools how to build data pipelines using cloud ETL Tools (Azure Data Factory an advantage) with advanced data ingestion techniques.
Tableau/ Power BI experience of integration with a cloud warehouse.
Data architecture and modelling experience (e.g. facts and dimensions materialized views etc).
Experience of modelling in Data build tool (DBT).
Experience with the Python programming language or similar.
Experience with source control systems such as GIT.
Experience of working agile teams using methodologies such as Scrum or Kanban.
Experience of supporting junior developers.
Experience of RESTful and GraphQL API integration.
Experience of developing and using continuous integration and development. pipelines with tools such as Azure DevOps TeamCity or Jenkins.
Data Warehouse Design - a demonstrable and broad understanding of best practices common issues and how to solve them.
Advanced skills in SQL.
API experience with Change data capture capabilities in Snowflake.
Ability to present findings in a structured clear manner with actionable insights.
Excellent oral and written communication skills for translating data insights into concise executive summaries and presentations.
Evidence of literacy and numeracy.
Experience of championing Equality Diversity and Inclusion in own work area.
Ability to monitor and evaluate the extent to which equality and diversity legislation policies procedures are applied.
Ability to identify issues with the potential to impact on protected groups and take appropriate action.

Role context
Roles at this level will either be technical specialists operating at a very high specialist level as expert contributors or experienced functional/technical professionals with a broader knowledge across their discipline with managerial responsibility for the delivery or ownership of a service.

Core competencies/transferable skills
Working at this level you will be able to develop and successfully demonstrate the core competencies/transferable skills outlined in each of the areas shown below. You will be expected to take ownership for getting things done including calling on or joining others to assist. You will be expected to be flexible as required in supporting your department and wider University.

Planning and organising
lead and manage a technical/IT/specialist team to deliver a service balancing short term delivery with longer term planning horizons;
determine priorities and allocate resources to meet planned objectives and requirements;
monitor performance standards taking appropriate actions to ensure service delivery is uniformly excellent
ensure health and safety of the area and equipment/hardware;
carry out project work including planning and delivering programmes of work to budget and deadline;
advise on future requirements of for example equipment apparatus furniture and fittings space;
make a major contribution to the development of policies and procedures to ensure that all legislative and University requirements are met within the laboratories/workshops and work areas.
or
make significant contributions to the design/development/application of services techniques specialist equipment or materials;
design plan and deliver programmes of specialist work;
operate as a high level specialist initiating and developing ideas/approaches promoting and delivering innovative solutions.

Problem solving and decision making
use analytical and problem-solving skills to resolve specialist and technical issues; may be one of the few able to provide solutions in a specialised field;
provide comprehensive advice and make innovative contributions.

Organisational understanding
has an excellent understanding of own working area and a broad understanding of the contribution other areas make to the success of the University;
has an excellent understanding of how the University operates together with an understanding of how academia operates in the UK;
demonstrates empathy with the academic endeavour and seeks to encourage others to do so.

Relationships and communication
communicate clearly on technical or professional issues to non-specialists and senior level audiences and command their respect;
represent the department at internal and external meetings/events/network with colleagues in other institutions to share best practice.

Informal enquiries to Julian Kobylarz email -

View our staff values and behaviours here

Use of AI in applications: We want to understand your genuine interest in the role and for the written elements of your application to accurately reflect your own communication style. Applications that rely too heavily on AI tools can appear generic and lack the detail we need to assess your skills and experience. Such applications will unlikely be progressed to interview.

We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of University of Birmingham staff and that diversity in its many forms is a strength that underpins the exchange of ideas innovation and debate at the heart of University life. We are committed to proactively addressing the barriers experienced by some groups in our community and are proud to hold Athena SWAN Race Equality Charter and Disability Confident accreditations. We have an Equality Diversity and Inclusion Centre that focuses on continuously improving the University as a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. We are also committed to sustainability which is a key part of our strategy. You can find out more about our work to create a fairer university for everyone on our website.