Have the digital world at your feet


As a Data Integration Technical Lead at the FA, you will be responsible for leading the data integration engineers within your Pod (Team/Value stream). You will be key in ensuring your Pod builds the right thing in the right way. This is a technical leadership and developer role responsible for the end-to-end development of a suite of FA applications. Working primarily within a Microsoft-based technology stack, the role serves as the central point for all integration development activities. Key responsibilities include development, establishing coding standards, implementing quality assurance processes, and overseeing the work of developers. The ideal candidate will wear multiple hats-acting as an architect, delivery manager, data integration engineer, quality assurance, mentor, problem solver, and collaborative team member-ensuring both technical excellence and alignment with business goals.


The role is a 12-month Fixed-Term Contract based at Wembley Stadium.


What will you be doing?

Collaborate with solution architects, application architects and data engineers to develop solutions meeting delivery goals
Identifying and capturing work that needs to be done, including dependencies external to the team
Responsible for onboarding new team members, and managing the impact of any leavers
Being across the health of the team. Is everyone contributing? Is everyone growing? Does the team operate in psychological safety?
Lead and develop a high-performing, cross-functional team, fostering collaboration, shared success, and continuous growth through mentoring and coaching.
Establish, uphold and champion team norms and engineering standards, promoting a culture of accountability and excellence.
Contribute to technical discussions and architecture decisions, leveraging your software engineering expertise to guide quality and scalability.
Support agile delivery practices and ceremonies, and continuous improvement through feedback and best practices.
Enable robust DevOps practices, including CI/CD pipeline management and Kubernetes deployments.
Promote a data-driven culture, helping the team define and track key performance and delivery metrics.
Drive innovation and continuous improvement, encouraging experimentation and adapting processes to enhance efficiency.
Collaborate with stakeholders to align on priorities, maintain a clear technical roadmap, and ensure transparency across technical and non-technical teams.
Monitor changes to existing code base on a regular basis to ensure quality and robustness of software solutions ensuring compliance with FA development standards and processes.
Optimise the developer experience to make the development process easier and help the team to become more productive.
Ensure that production application services and applications are monitored and observed proactively - spotting potential issues early.
Continuously stretch engineers with meaningful challenges and provide honest, constructive feedback to accelerate their development.
Monitor and assess the capability and skill sets of developers within your team, highlighting any training and development requirements (both internal and external third-party developers).
Assist Product Owners to break down requirements into specific programming tasks and provide estimates where required
Communicate delivery progress, timelines, and impact of changes clearly to Delivery Manager.
Ensure the quality of the product is built into the whole development lifecycle, and not an afterthought for the QA engineers.
Encourage the delivery team to adhere to agile development methodologies, practicing Test Driven Development, Behaviour Driven Development, and advocating paired programming.
Ensure that user stories flow efficiently through the workflow and support the team in the identification and removal of impediments
Keep abreast of the latest developments in technology and demonstrate proactive engagement with developer communities.
Execute additional tasks as required to meet the FA's changing priorities.
Comply with all company policies and procedures to ensure that the highest standards of health, safety, and well-being can be maintained.


What are we looking for?


Essential for the role:


Technical & Experience

Development experience using C# (.NET Core),ASP.NET , JavaScript, T-SQL
Experience designing, developing and maintaining MS SQL Server relational databases with change tracking / CDC
Message-based integration - Azure Service bus
Working with Azure Data Factory
Experience with Dependency Injection & IoC frameworks
Experience with ORM Frameworks: Entity Framework, Dapper
Experience in building and consuming web services using micro-services architecture using REST APIs
Experience in keeping multiple applications in synch - real time/batch processing.
Experience of leading teams of technical specialists through to successful delivery
Experience of providing technical leadership and oversight with offshore and/or third-party delivery teams
Experience with unit testing, TDD and BDD
Experience with working with SAST (Static Application Security Testing) and SCA (Software Composition Analysis) tools e.g. Sonar.
Experience with design and development of n-tier architectures
Knowledge of common software design patterns.
Working knowledge of Agile/Scrum


Delivery Planning

Experience of agile estimating techniques - from large initiatives to user stories.
Working with delivery management and product disciplines to produce quarterly plans and longer-term roadmaps.


Beneficial to have:

Technical educational background
Microsoft Software Development Certifications
Experience developing and supporting high-volume public-facing web applications
Experience of using Sitecore
Typescript, Angular, React/Vue frameworks
Experience of working in a Sport related environment



What's in it for you?

We are committed to ensuring everyone can flourish in their roles, to achieve this we have unique office spaces under the arch of the iconic Wembley National Stadium, which is the home of English Football. We are also delighted to offer a world-class, Elite Performance Centre, St. George's Park in Staffordshire which is an exceptional setting to develop and inspire high-performing England teams and leaders.


We pride ourselves in offering a competitive salary as well as great opportunities to develop and grow in your role. But that is not all; we also have a range of exciting benefits, some of which can be found below:

Access to event day tickets at Wembley Stadium, alongside a host of regular internal events throughout the season, encouraging you to connect and learn with your colleagues and look after your mental health and well-being.
Free, nutritious lunches at Wembley Stadium and St. George's Park.
Free private medical cover.
A contributory pension scheme.
An additional 'Thank You' days leave, volunteering days as well as 25 days annual leave (based on a full-time, permanent contract.)
A hybrid working model which offers greater flexibility.



Currently, we are working within a hybrid working model whereby the expectation is to work from your contractual location for part of the week, and as and when required by the team. The remaining days can be worked remotely. We will continue to monitor this model, and it may be adjusted in future if deemed necessary. The contractual location of this role can be found on the FA Careers page.

We are a diverse workplace, aspiring to represent football across the country. The Football Association actively promotes inclusion and diversity, encouraging you to be the best version of yourself at work.


We welcome applications from everyone and are proud to be an equal opportunities employer. If you have any particular requirements in respect of the recruitment or interview process, please mention this during your application.


As part of the FA's commitment to ensuring a safe environment for everyone in football, every employee will be required to complete a DBS check. The level of the check required will be based on the activity of the specific job role and in line with legislation and government guidance.

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