Data Manager (2023-5660)

We are currently seeking applications for a Data Manager within Education Scotland based in Glasgow, Livingston, Dundee and Aberdeen. These are permanent and pensionable appointments and new entrants will normally start on the minimum of the pay range. Candidates with a disability who meet the essential criteria below will be invited to the assessments.

DDaT Pay Supplement
This post attracts a £5,000 DDaT pay supplement after a 9 months DDaT competency qualifying period. Pay supplements are temporary payments designed to address recruitment and retention issues caused by market pressures and are subject to regular review.

Overview

Are you passionate about improving services and enhancing user experience? This is an exciting opportunity to join Education Scotland’s Digital Services team to manage and develop the data architecture of the organisation and create policies and procedures for data management.

Education Scotland is Scotland’s national improvement agency for education. Our role is to provide assurance and promote innovation, from the early years to adult learning. We are committed to embedding our values of excellence, creativity, integrity, and respect in everything we do.

The Data Manager role will be based within the Digital Services division of Education Scotland. Key responsibilities will be the associated data elements related to the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform, Salesforce, and additional applications which will consist of commercial and bespoke services which need to be reviewed, transformed, and rationalised.

The post-holder will provide a data architecture perspective whilst recognising the design and technical constraints within a collaborative multidisciplinary delivery team. The post-holder will facilitate communication between suppliers, developers, testers, and the business, working closely with Senior Management, policy leads and key internal & external stakeholders.

Using analysis, facilitation skills and techniques, the post-holder will ensure the business data needs are properly analysed and correctly reflected in the approach adopted to deliver the solution. They will assess the potential impact of evolving requirements on other areas of the system from a business perspective and user centred design. The post-holder will be familiar with industry standard project management methodologies (such as PRINCE 2 and Agile).

The Data Manager will be a central point of focus for all technical matters related to data, having a high level of data access and a strong understanding of data and data management.  They will actively liaise with the organisation’s data owners to resolve data issues – working alongside the corporate IT support – and provide advice for best practice for the data held within Education Scotland.  They will work closely with the Head of Corporate Digital Services on developing and maintaining the data management strategy and data policies.  The role will also maintain the architectural documentation for the data, such as the data models and data dictionary.

HOW WILL I SPEND MY TIME?

As Data Manager, you will play a pivotal role in in the Digital Services Team within Education Scotland, empowering, and providing peer support to people as they seek to use data more effectively to keep stakeholders informed.

This will include tasks to:

• Develop and implement data quality standards to maintain accurate and reliable data. Regularly monitor data integrity, identifying and resolving data quality issues promptly.
• Develop and enforce data governance policies, ensuring compliance with data protection regulations and industry best practices. Establish data access controls and permissions to safeguard sensitive information and implement data management best practices to drive efficiency improvements.
• Collaborate with different teams to identify data requirements and establish data collection processes. Ensuring the integration of data from various sources, align to data management strategies.
• Conduct data analysis to extract meaningful insights and trends, supporting the decision-making process.
• Create and maintain data documentation, including data dictionaries, data models, and data flow diagrams. Manage metadata to enhance data discoverability, usage and definition.
• Continuously identify opportunities to optimise data-related processes and workflows.

 After a successful first year, you will have established frameworks for data architecture best practice for the services Education Scotland provide and put momentum behind the drive for seamless digital services.

Responsibilities

• The Data Manager will provide a single point of data stewardship regarding data issues, having a high level of data access and a strong understanding of data and data management. They would have a close relationship with each of the organisation’s data owners and advise on data governance and data management.
• The Data Manager will monitor data quality and advise on strategies to resolve data quality issues.
• The Data Manager will be involved with the Taxonomy & Tagging work to standardise metadata terminology and tags within the organisation.
• The Data Manager will understand data governance and how it works in relation to other organisational governance structures. They will participate in or deliver the assurance of services.
• The Data Manager will understand how to apply basic techniques for analysis of data and synthesis of findings. You know how to involve your team in analysis and dissemination. You can present clear findings that colleagues can understand and reuse.
• The Data Manager will know to use the most appropriate medium to visualise data to tell compelling and actionable stories relevant for business goals. You can present, communicate, and disseminate data appropriately and with high impact. In addition, you can set up a system to get data ready for use and specify how data should be cleansed and prepared. You can bring data together from different sources and communicate the limitations of data.
• The Data Manager will also be heavily involved and should be an experienced data analyst to create structures, models and artefacts for various reporting demands.

Essential Criteria

1. Relevant experience in creating logical and physical data models from scratch, whilst possessing knowledge of both transactional and analytical data analysis and modelling, with particular awareness of CRM and CMS systems.
2. Demonstrable experience in creating and handling data quality rules, defining data reconciliation rules, and data migration with integration across various systems, with the ability to identify, collect and migrate data, as well as manipulate and analyse different data sets.
3. Proven understanding of the processes and tools to support data warehousing, relational and dimensional data structures and data engineering/ETL.
4. Ability to define, manage and evolve data architecture artefacts across all data domains (Data Modelling, BI, DI) whilst pursuing, understanding, and documenting dependencies between data and other domains.

• Learning and development tailored to your role
• An environment with flexible working options
• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
• A Civil Service pension with an average employer contribution of 27%

Job contact :

• Name : Allan Feeney
• Email : allan.feeney@educationscotland.gov.scot

Recruitment team

• Email : ScottishGovernmentrecruitment@gov.scot