Tell us about your role, and your team.

My name is Hardeep, and I’m an Engineering Manager based at Sky’s Osterley office.

As an Engineering Manager, my primary role is to lead and coordinate a squad of Data Engineers to deliver scalable and reliable data pipelines. Also, I coach and mentor the squad in Agile ways of working, promote development practices and help with their professional development.

My squad includes 7 Data Engineers, a Technical Product Analyst and a QA Engineer; who work on the design, development and testing of data pipelines. We use Scrum methodology to help us build the pipelines and profile the data.

The result of these data pipelines is an analytical-ready database layer which help our US and EU customers with data insights and reporting across streaming applications such as Peacock, SkyShowtime and NOW TV.

Describe a project, or career highlight where you were able to make a difference.

Before I joined the team, I worked with software developers on web and mobile applications. Moving into a data domain, where some teams were still new to Agile methodologies, it was a bit of challenge to begin with.

After trying out a few things, I managed to coach and mentor one of our first data delivery squads in using Scrum. We now have a framework to help break down work, track throughput, promote knowledge sharing and deliver our pipelines. This has become the standard way of working for all our squads.

At Sky we’re always challenging ourselves to deliver the next big thing. Describe what that’s like, and why it’s exciting.

Although we utilise cloud technologies to help process new feeds, enrich existing ones and onboard new propositions – we are always looking at how to make data delivery quicker and also keep our cloud costs to a minimum.

We are currently improving how we configure our pipelines, adding more automation, and providing a way for our customers to self serve their data needs.

These challenges help bring together our teams to collaborate and think of new ideas, which is always exciting.

How is Sky an inclusive place to work where you can be yourself?

Sky is a very supportive place to work when it comes to inclusivity. For me, it is an organisation that celebrates diversity and has a great team culture.

They celebrate many festivals around the year; including Christmas, Diwali, Eid and Lunar New Year. There are events for everyone; whether it be International Women’s Day, Black History Month, and more.

Sky also gives teams the freedom and empowerment to work as they best see fit. We have a great approach towards hybrid working and we get to choose the days we come into the office. I’m encouraged to take time out with my team. That usually involves a weekly coffee catch-up, a game of Uno or Mario Kart, or taking them to a team-building event to help create better relationships.