Lead Data Analyst

Aker Systems

Aker Systems was founded in 2017 by a team of experienced technology professionals who recognised an opportunity to provide highly secure enterprise data platforms to large organisations.  We build and operate ground-breaking, ultra-secure, high performance, cloud-based data infrastructure for the enterprise. Our proprietary technology solutions drive performance and reduce costs while helping our clients to improve the management and sharing of data across their organisations. In 2024, Aker Systems won the Breakthrough Culture Awards highlighting growth companies putting culture first. In 2020 Aker Systems was recognised as a ‘One to Watch’ on the Sunday Times Tech Track.  The Company was also recognised at the Thames Valley Tech Awards 2020; winning the Thames Valley Tech Company of the year, the Emerging Tech Company and High Growth Tech Business categories.  We encourage people of all different backgrounds and identities to apply.  We are committed to maintaining an inclusive, and supportive place for you to do your very best work. The Senior Manager, Delivery Lead, serves as the bridge between strategic vision and technical execution on a specific project or projects.  Reporting to the Director, Programme Delivery, you lead multidisciplinary teams to deliver complex initiatives. In this role, you will build and maintain teams, including managing and mentoring a team of Delivery Managers, fostering a highly collaborative environment where execution meets human-centric leadership. In this role, you will be the 'manager of managers,' responsible for unblocking complex dependencies across multiple workstreams and ensuring our technical teams have the clarity and momentum they need to deliver excellent results to our clients. A UK Government Security Check (SC) clearance is required for this role.  If you don’t hold SC clearance, we will support you to apply assuming you have lived and worked in the UK for a minimum of 5 years. Duties & Responsibilities * Lead the end-to-end delivery of complex projects * Work closely with internal and external stakeholders and external delivery partners to deliver high quality cloud & data solutions for our clients * Proactively identify and manage technical or operational dependencies across multiple workstreams to reduce delivery risk * Act as the primary point of escalation for delivery teams, rapidly resolving impediments and unblocking problems to maintain pace * Identify areas for improvement and contribute to the wider growth of Aker’s delivery capability and processes * Work with other departments (Sales/Finance/HR) to ensure that projects’ budgets are estimated, costed and resourced appropriately * Collaborate with architecture, infrastructure and security to ensure Aker delivery teams are fully aligned to the client’s outcome * Provide effective reporting of project delivery, timelines, milestones and budgets to senior business stakeholders * Work with Account Managers, participate in client commercial reviews and support creation of SoWs for future deliverables * Take responsibility for the quality of the team’s output and ensure the client satisfaction is of a high standard * Translate technical progress and risks into clear, non-technical updates for the Director and other senior business stakeholders * Manage a mentor a multidisciplinary team including engineers and analysts, fostering a high-performance culture and continuous improvement. including performance management, mentoring, engagement and team building * Provide constructive and real-time feedback through goal setting, regular 1:1s, personal development conversations and annual appraisals * Encourage team camaraderie and collaboration. Resolve any conflicts within the team promptly and effectively thus ensuring a positive and productive working environment * Successfully onboard and train new hires, complete probation milestones and processes, create robust inductions and provide career development support and guidance Core Competencies * 7+ years of experience in a delivery management role with a proven track record of leading complex, large-scale projects required * Experience of Public Cloud Services and technologies (AWS, GCP, Azure) * Previous experience leading cross-functional teams, including the management of managers, strongly preferred * Have a good understanding of technical solutions and data integration * Deep expertise in Agile (Scrum, Kanban) and traditional Waterfall frameworks, with the ability to blend them based on the context * Familiarity with software delivery pipelines, Jira, Azure DevOps, or other digital delivery tools for real-time tracking * Strong team management ability, with emotional intelligence to manage conflict and motivate diverse teams * Vendor or offshore management experience a plus * Advanced stakeholder management, negotiation and conflict resolution skills including being comfortable in dealing with challenging and pressurised situations * Ability to understand complex organisational structures and multi-supplier landscapes * A driven leader who can shape a team and bring them on the journey to success for our clients * Vendor or offshore management experience preferred * ITIL v3 Foundation and /or SAFe Agile preferred * UK Government project experience preferred       Aker Systems Attributes At Aker we work as a team; we are collaborative, hardworking, open, and delivery obsessed. There is no blame culture here: try things, and take responsibility for the outcomes. You are always part of the wider Aker. We help our colleagues and take pride in successfully achieving difficult tasks. We run towards problems and help to solve them. Communicate always, do so accurately and in a timely fashion. In return, we offer a competitive salary, 25 days holiday plus bank holidays, company paid medical insurance and life assurance, pension scheme, annual training allowance, wellbeing allowance, virtual GP, Employee Assistance plan and more. Equal Opportunities Aker Systems fosters a diverse environment that encourages openness in its communications and is committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, age, marital status, national origin, citizenship status, disability, veteran status or other personal characteristics. We embrace differences of opinion and diversity because they help challenge us and find new groundbreaking technical solutions.

Aker Systems

Aker Systems was founded in 2017 by a team of experienced technology professionals who recognised an opportunity to provide highly secure enterprise data platforms to large organisations.  We build and operate ground-breaking, ultra-secure, high performance, cloud-based data infrastructure for the enterprise. Our proprietary technology solutions drive performance and reduce costs while helping our clients to improve the management and sharing of data across their organisations. In 2024, Aker Systems won the Breakthrough Culture Awards highlighting growth companies putting culture first. In 2020 Aker Systems was recognised as a ‘One to Watch’ on the Sunday Times Tech Track.  The Company was also recognised at the Thames Valley Tech Awards 2020; winning the Thames Valley Tech Company of the year, the Emerging Tech Company and High Growth Tech Business categories.  We encourage people of all different backgrounds and identities to apply.  We are committed to maintaining an inclusive, and supportive place for you to do your very best work. Aker Systems was founded in 2017 by a team of experienced technology professionals who recognised an opportunity to provide highly secure enterprise data platforms to large organisations. We build and operate ground-breaking, ultra-secure, high-performance, cloud-based data infrastructure for the enterprise. Our proprietary technology solutions drive performance and reduce costs while helping our clients to improve the management and sharing of data across their organisations. In 2024, Aker Systems won the Breakthrough Culture Awards highlighting growth companies putting culture first. In 2020 Aker Systems was recognised as “One to Watch’ on the Sunday Times Tech Track. The Company was also recognised at the Thames Valley Tech Awards 2020, winning the Thames Valley Tech Company of the Year, the Emerging Tech Company and High Growth Tech Business categories. We encourage people of all different backgrounds and identities to apply. We are committed to maintaining an inclusive, and supportive place for you to do your very best work. A UK Government Security Check (SC) clearance is required for this role. If you don’t hold SC clearance, we will support you to apply assuming you have lived and worked in the UK for a minimum of 5 years. Role Overview As a Principal DevOps Engineer, you will help lead the development and implementation of products to create secure and scalable cloud environments in AWS and Azure, leveraging the latest commercial and open-source technologies and techniques. This also involves building automated deployments using configuration management technology, deploying new modules, upgrades and fixes to test and production environments.     You Will: * Design, build, test and deploy cloud-based infrastructure and applications using CI/CD and Infrastructure-as-Code directly and as part of our product suite * Work with other engineers, architects and analysts to shape our DevOps products * Support deployment and operational activities of products into our clients’ environments * Assist with setup/maintenance of environments for both manual and automated testing * Assist in production support through the investigation and resolution of incidents * Perform ongoing routine application maintenance tasks * Be the senior technical contact for DevOps related matters and mentor to more junior members of the team Core Competencies The successful candidate will have a Bachelor's degree or greater. An equivalent of at least 10+ years' working experience in a DevOps capacity is also required for this position. You will have demonstrated the following competencies to the proficiency level appropriate to the seniority of the role: * Commercial Experience in deploying and operating infrastructure (network, servers, services) and applications on AWS and Azure * Developing and operating using open-source and commercial software within a cloud-centric environment * Strong IaC skills including Terraform and Terragrunt * GitHub/GitLab CI/CD experience to design, build and maintain pipelines for building and deploying our applications * Test Driven Development with appropriate tools and frameworks * Expert in cloud orchestration and containerisation technologies, i.e. Kubernetes and Docker * Knowledge of large-scale databases and distributed technologies, such as RDS * Knowledge of distributed event streaming technologies, such as Kafka * Knowledge of scripting languages such as Bash and Python * Experience of mentoring and leading people around you and taking point on key decisions Aker Systems Attributes At Aker we work as a team, we are collaborative, hardworking, open, and delivery obsessed. There is no blame culture here: try things, and take responsibility for the outcomes. You are always part of the wider Aker. We help out our colleagues and take pride in successfully achieving difficult tasks. We run towards problems and help solve them. Communicate always, do so accurately and in a timely fashion. Benefits In return, we offer: * Competitive salary * 25 days holiday (excluding bank holidays) * Company Paid Medical Insurance * Life Assurance (4x basic salary) * Pension scheme * Perks at Work * Cycle Scheme * Tech Scheme * Season Ticket Loan * Plus, a list of voluntary benefits including: * Dental Insurance * Critical Illness Cover * Virtual GP Equal Opportunities Aker Systems fosters a diverse environment that encourages openness in its communications and is committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, age, marital status, national origin, citizenship status, disability, veteran status or other personal characteristics. We embrace differences of opinion and diversity because they help challenge us and find new groundbreaking technical solutions.   Aker Systems Attributes At Aker we work as a team; we are collaborative, hardworking, open, and delivery obsessed. There is no blame culture here: try things, and take responsibility for the outcomes. You are always part of the wider Aker. We help our colleagues and take pride in successfully achieving difficult tasks. We run towards problems and help to solve them. Communicate always, do so accurately and in a timely fashion. In return, we offer a competitive salary, 25 days holiday plus bank holidays, company paid medical insurance and life assurance, pension scheme, annual training allowance, wellbeing allowance, virtual GP, Employee Assistance plan and more. Equal Opportunities Aker Systems fosters a diverse environment that encourages openness in its communications and is committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, age, marital status, national origin, citizenship status, disability, veteran status or other personal characteristics. We embrace differences of opinion and diversity because they help challenge us and find new groundbreaking technical solutions.

Aker Systems

Aker Systems was founded in 2017 by a team of experienced technology professionals who recognised an opportunity to provide highly secure enterprise data platforms to large organisations.  We build and operate ground-breaking, ultra-secure, high performance, cloud-based data infrastructure for the enterprise. Our proprietary technology solutions drive performance and reduce costs while helping our clients to improve the management and sharing of data across their organisations. In 2024, Aker Systems won the Breakthrough Culture Awards highlighting growth companies putting culture first. In 2020 Aker Systems was recognised as a ‘One to Watch’ on the Sunday Times Tech Track.  The Company was also recognised at the Thames Valley Tech Awards 2020; winning the Thames Valley Tech Company of the year, the Emerging Tech Company and High Growth Tech Business categories.  We encourage people of all different backgrounds and identities to apply.  We are committed to maintaining an inclusive, and supportive place for you to do your very best work. About the Role We are seeking a Lead Performance Automation Engineer to define and drive performance engineering strategy, tooling, and practices across large-scale, distributed, cloud-native platforms. This is a technical leadership role responsible for ensuring systems are: * Scalable * Reliable * Resilient under load * Optimised for performance and cost efficiency You will lead performance testing and engineering initiatives across multiple teams, embedding non-functional quality into every stage of the software lifecycle. Key Responsibilities 1. Performance Engineering Strategy & Leadership * Define and own the organisation-wide performance testing and engineering strategy. * Establish standards for: * Performance testing approaches * Workload modelling * Capacity planning * Introduce and scale performance engineering practices across multiple delivery teams. * Provide technical leadership and mentoring to QA and engineering teams on performance best practices. * Align performance goals with business SLAs, SLOs, and user experience expectations. 2. Performance Test Architecture & Automation * Design and implement scalable performance test frameworks and automation pipelines. * Lead adoption of tools such as: * Gatling, JMeter, k6, Locust or similar * Build reusable solutions for: * Load testing * Stress testing * Spike testing * Soak testing * Integrate performance testing into CI/CD pipelines for continuous validation. * Ensure performance tests are repeatable, reliable, and production-representative. 3. Workload Modelling & Test Design * Define realistic user workload models based on production data and usage patterns. * Design performance test scenarios reflecting: * Peak load * Concurrent users * Throughput and latency requirements * Apply risk-based prioritisation for performance testing. * Ensure coverage across: * APIs * Microservices * Data pipelines * Event-driven systems 4. Backend, API & Distributed System Performance * Lead performance validation for: * Microservices architectures * Event-driven systems (Kafka) * High-throughput APIs * Analyse latency, throughput, error rates, and bottlenecks across distributed systems. * Validate system behaviour under failure conditions and degraded environments. * Ensure horizontal scalability and resilience strategies are tested. 5. Cloud, Infrastructure & Scalability Testing * Validate performance across: * AWS cloud environments * Containerised platforms (Docker, Kubernetes) * Conduct capacity planning and infrastructure benchmarking. * Ensure systems scale efficiently using: * Auto-scaling * Load balancing * Distributed architectures * Evaluate performance of Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) deployments. 6. Observability, Analysis & Bottleneck Resolution * Use observability tools to analyse system performance, including: * Metrics (Prometheus, Datadog) * Logs (ELK) * Traces (distributed tracing tools) * Identify and diagnose: * CPU, memory, I/O bottlenecks * Network latency issues * Database performance constraints * Collaborate with engineering teams to optimise system performance and architecture. 7. Non-Functional Quality Governance * Define and enforce performance SLAs, SLOs, and acceptance criteria. * Establish quality gates for performance within CI/CD pipelines. * Ensure performance requirements are validated before production release. * Drive adoption of performance testing standards across teams. * Support audit, compliance, and regulatory expectations in performance-critical systems. 8. Production Performance & Continuous Improvement * Analyse real production performance data to refine testing strategies. * Lead performance-related incident investigations and RCA activities. * Establish feedback loops between production observability and test environments. * Drive improvements in: * System responsiveness * Stability under load * Operational resilience 9. Metrics, Reporting & Optimisation * Define and track performance KPIs, including: * Response times * Throughput * Error rates * Resource utilisation * Build performance dashboards and reporting frameworks. * Drive continuous optimisation initiatives based on performance data. * Align performance metrics with business outcomes and user experience. Technology Environment Performance Testing Tools * Gatling, k6, JMeter, Locust (or similar) Languages * Java, Kotlin, Python, or JavaScript Architecture * Microservices, Event-driven systems, Kafka Cloud & Infrastructure * AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform CI/CD * GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins Observability * Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, ELK, Distributed Tracing What We’re Looking For Essential * Proven experience as a Performance Test Lead / Performance Engineer / SDET * Strong experience defining performance testing strategies and frameworks * Hands-on expertise with modern performance testing tools * Deep understanding of: * Scalability and distributed system performance * Cloud-native architectures * Experience integrating performance testing into CI/CD pipelines * Strong skills in: * Performance analysis and bottleneck identification * Root cause analysis and system optimisation * Experience defining and tracking performance SLAs/SLOs and KPIs * Ability to lead and influence cross-team quality improvements Desirable * Experience in high-scale or regulated environments * Exposure to: * Chaos engineering * Resilience and fault injection testing * Experience with capacity planning and cost optimisation * Knowledge of security-performance interactions (e.g., encryption overhead) Personal Attributes * Strong systems thinking and analytical mindset * Ability to translate performance data into practical engineering improvements * Influential leader across engineering and product teams * Proactive and outcome-driven * Strong communication and stakeholder management skills Aker Systems Attributes At Aker we work as a team; we are collaborative, hardworking, open, and delivery obsessed. There is no blame culture here: try things, and take responsibility for the outcomes. You are always part of the wider Aker. We help our colleagues and take pride in successfully achieving difficult tasks. We run towards problems and help to solve them. Communicate always, do so accurately and in a timely fashion. In return, we offer a competitive salary, 25 days holiday plus bank holidays, company paid medical insurance and life assurance, pension scheme, annual training allowance, wellbeing allowance, virtual GP, Employee Assistance plan and more. Equal Opportunities Aker Systems fosters a diverse environment that encourages openness in its communications and is committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, age, marital status, national origin, citizenship status, disability, veteran status or other personal characteristics. We embrace differences of opinion and diversity because they help challenge us and find new groundbreaking technical solutions.