The first Fabric hire is the one who decides which number is right.
FERG Search is a specialist recruiter for Microsoft Fabric engineers, Azure Data Factory and Azure data engineers, data architects, Power BI developers and data platform leads in Australia and New Zealand, permanent and contract, including teams moving from Synapse to Fabric. Every search is run by the founder, Fintan Ferguson, from Melbourne.
Fabric puts the lakehouse, the warehouse, the pipelines and Power BI in one place, which means the first serious hire owns decisions that every report after it depends on. We place the people who have run Fabric and Power BI in production, with the spend under control.
First shortlist within 48 hours of an agreed brief.
The seats we fill in Fabric and data.
- Fabric data engineers.
- Data architects.
- Power BI developers and analytics engineers.
- Azure data engineers: Azure Data Factory, Synapse and Azure SQL.
- Engineers who have moved Synapse and older warehouses to Fabric.
- Azure database engineers: Azure SQL and Cosmos DB.
- Data platform leads who own capacity and cost.
Checked technically and commercially, before you meet them.
- The semantic model they own, and who trusts it.
- The pipeline that broke, and what they changed.
- How they manage capacity and spend.
- Which models and pipelines they built, and which they maintained.
- The Synapse or older warehouse they moved to Fabric, and what broke on the way.
What the seat pays.
Fabric briefs stall when the first data hire is budgeted as a report developer.
Fabric engineer, Power BI and Azure data engineer bands follow in the second edition of the FERG Search Salary Guide. The first edition covers Dynamics 365, Business Central, Copilot Studio and senior AI engineering. Until then, ask: we will give you the band we are seeing accepted, declined and countered for the seat you are briefing.
Straight answers on Fabric and data.
Who should own Fabric capacity?
One named person, early. Capacity is where Fabric cost and performance meet, and in the programmes we see go well it has an owner before the first workspace goes live.
Can a Power BI developer move into Fabric?
Often, and it is the most common route we see. The step is from building reports to owning the model and the pipeline behind them. The people who make it have usually already been fixing the data upstream of their reports.
We are moving from Synapse to Fabric. Who do we need?
Someone who has done the move before, not only someone who knows Fabric. The work is mapping the Data Factory pipelines, the Synapse SQL and Spark jobs and the Power BI models that depend on them, then cutting over without the numbers changing. If nobody has decided the target model yet, add a data architect first.
Do you recruit Fabric roles in New Zealand?
Yes, anywhere in New Zealand, including Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, permanent and contract, with the same founder running the search.
What does a Microsoft Fabric engineer earn in Australia?
Fabric engineer and Power BI bands are planned for the second edition of the FERG Search Salary Guide. Until then we will give you the band we are seeing accepted, declined and countered for the seat you are briefing.
Brief a Fabric or data role.
Tell us which number nobody trusts yet. We search for the person who can own it.