Data Technician

Who are we?

South Western Railway (SWR) operates over 1,500 services each weekday across the network and employs more than 5,000 people. We provide easy and convenient mobility, connecting people and communities in South West London, southern counties of England, and the Isle of Wight.

Join our team and help us continue to bring people together to get the most out of life.

About the job

As part of the RY25 Annual Business Plan we have DfT authority to build a full team of data specialists, in order to deliver our business plan commitments requirements with regard to Open Data and the Open Data Pipeline and to enable us to make better use of our existing data assets. This supports a key policy aim of DfT following publication of the Williams-Shapps plan for rail and has been re-validated post the new government. The Data Technician role is the face of the Commercial Data team and will be responsible for understanding and interpreting business data requirements (including open data requirements) and converting these into actionable steps for themselves and the rest of the Commercial Data Team. The role is a combination of a business analyst and data analyst and is the crucial link between business need and technical expertise. The Data Technician will have deep knowledge of the data that is stored by the Commercial Data Team and how it can be best leveraged to support the business whilst being considerate of the limitations of the data. Analysts across the business will be able to call on this expertise to enhance their own work. The role will create reports and dashboards to identify, interpret, and answer frequently asked questions and requests for data, this will remove simple but time-consuming data fetch tasks from other analysts in the Commercial Team giving them more time and resource for value-add analysis and reporting. The Data Technician will also look to innovate on Commercial Data using combined knowledge of the business, industry, and data itself to create a data product that is greater than the sum of its parts as well as immediately valuable and usable for end-users such as analysts across the business. This is a key support role in fulfilling SWR's purpose as by interpreting business data needs and returning rich and user-friendly data and reports it will enable the rest of the business to operate faster and smarter when working on initiatives to bring people together to get the most out of life.

Your main responsibilities will be:

• Act as the business analyst for the Commercial Data Team by understanding and interpreting the commercial data requirements of the business then converting these into actionable plans to be executed by the Commercial Data Team
• Be the link between the Data Engineers and end users for data products once they are up and running
• Have a good relationship with suppliers of data, effectively communicating business needs to them
• Develop and maintain a deep understanding of the data stored by the Commercial Data Team and ensuring this is documented
• Use comprehensive knowledge of datasets, their uses and limitations, to be point of contact for analysts across the business using commercial data
• Complex and efficient querying of data to meet data pull requests
• Identifying opportunities for automation as well as reducing duplicated and tedious work through the creation of self-serve dashboards and reports
• Use innovative, modern techniques to enhance data sets
• Effectively visualise and present innovations to stakeholders and end users
• Ensure data governance policies and procedures are kept to. Follow and police data security and privacy measures to protect sensitive information and comply with GDPR

You'll need to be:

• Effective business analyst, able to interpret data requests and problem statements into actionable steps towards an effective solution
• Strong proficiency in SQL, able to write complex, well-structured and efficient queries
• Proficiency in Python and experience with data manipulation packages such as pandas, numpy, matplotlib, seaborn etc…
• Proficiency in planning, creating, and maintaining dashboards in Power BI (or similar tool)
• Proven experience in presenting data in an interesting and user-friendly manner in presentations, reports, and dashboards
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills to effectively work with key stakeholders and suppliers across our data estate (e.g. RDG, DfT and Mistral Data Ltd, DfTO TOCs and others)
• Have a high attention to detail, completing work to a high level of accuracy, maintaining focus, with the ability to prioritize workloads and work to challenging deadlines
• Passionate about logical problem solving, able to balance the bigger picture with the details
• Demonstrates thoughtful and efficient design without over engineering solutions
• Proactive and with a drive for continuous improvement
• Valuable team member, able to easily collaborate and delegate to effectively and efficiently plan, manage and complete projects

Desirable

• Knowledge of rail commercial or operational systems (e.g. Lennon MOIRA, ORCATS, Cubic, BT MND) desirable
• Experience with commercial data in a rail setting (e.g. revenue, loadings, gate data)
• Knowledge and experience of working with AWS and/or Azure cloud data platforms
• Experience with machine learning and artificial intelligence
• Knowledge of data warehousing and data modelling concepts

About the location

South Western Railways HQ is based on the 4th Floor at South Bank Central, a stone's throw from the River Thames and a 10 minute walk from our busiest station, Waterloo. It is local to many well-known attractions, restaurants and retail facilities and is easily accessible by public transport. 

Working pattern

Working an average of 37 hours per week over 5 days

Monday - Friday, 09:00 - 17:30

The Reward

In return we offer a competitive salary and a variety of valuable benefits, including:

• Free duty and leisure travel on SWR services for employees
• Free leisure travel for spouse/partner and dependants (criteria dependent)
• 75% discount on many other train operating companies
• Full training and support with development
• Excellent pension scheme

We all belong at SWR. Our vision is to provide an inclusive environment for all colleagues, ensuring all candidates have an equal opportunity to access meaningful employment.

We value our differences such as age, gender, LGBTQIA+, ethnicity, religion, and disability. We maintain a zero tolerance towards any form of prejudice towards our colleagues, customers, and future talent.

We celebrate and encourage diversity of thought, progressive ways of working and seeing all our colleagues grow and thrive.

If you require additional support to complete your application due to a disability or neurodivergent condition, for example, dyslexia, dyspraxia, or autism, please follow the links below.  We encourage you to share any additional needs you may require so we can provide a fair and equal process for all who apply.

https://exceptionalindividuals.com/neurodiversity/

https://www.healthassured.org/blog/neurodiversity/