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Coding Your Future: A Guidebook for Students

17 Opportunities with UMSU

Are you a Manchester student who loves building things behind the scenes with systems, pipelines, and the invisible architecture that makes great insights possible? Do you enjoy turning messy, complex data into something structured, efficient, and powerful? Join the Students’ Union’s Insight & Data Team as a Student Data Engineer and help shape the foundations of our growing data ecosystem.

The University of Manchester Students’ Union (UMSU), is the biggest Students’ Union in the country, supporting over 48,000 students throughout their time at university. They help to make student life the best it can be by supporting students to campaign for change, creating opportunities to meet new people, providing employment opportunities, providing advice and support and being a safe place on campus. They have a part-time vacancy for a student data engineer described below.

The Students’ Union at the University of Manchester on the Oxford Road.

Figure 17.1: The Students’ Union at the University of Manchester on the Oxford Road.

17.1 Student Data Engineer

Job details as follows:

  • Salary: £12.60 per hour + holiday pay
  • Contract type: Zero Hours, part-time
  • Accountable to: Associate Director of Insight and Data
  • Hours: Approximately 2-10 hours per week during term-time
  • Location: Usually located at the main Students’ Union Building / with an option to work some hours remotely
  • Eligibility: Open to applicants with relevant skills and experience who are eligible to work in the UK and graduating in 2026 or later from:
    • The University of Manchester
    • The Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU)
    • Salford University

As a student data engineer, your key responsibilities will include:

  1. Designing Data Pipelines & Infrastructure
  2. Managing Data and Databases
  3. Data Quality, Reliability & Governance
  4. Collaboration & Support

Interested? Find out more and apply by 10th December 2025 23:59 at bit.ly/student-data-engineer

17.2 Microsoft Power BI

Some familiarity with Microsoft Power BI powerbi.microsoft.com is desirable for this role. If you’re not familiar with Power BI yet, take a look at the Power BI course offered free to students at the University of Manchester described in chapter 21.