Data Architect

Senior Data Architect / Strategic Data Architect / Data Solution Architect

Rate:£600-£650 p/d

IR35:Outside IR35

Time on site: 1day a week on site in London ideally but very flexible for the right person, would accommodate 1 day a month.

Start Date:ASAP but would wait for 4 weeks notice

Interview process:2 Stages

Overview:

We've partnered with a brilliant organisation who are looking to bring in a Strategic Data Architect that will lead the evolution and implementation of a unified data architecture across customer and operational domains. This is a strategic, delivery-focused engagement with the objective to produce clear, measurable outputs aligned to our clients transformation roadmap.

You'll engage with technical, business stakeholders and clients to design and implement the Data strategy for integrated data solutions aligned with both internal systems and strategic goals. You'll work as part of teams building solutions that make data accessible to enable evidence-based optimisation. They are passionate about culture and want to bring in someone who is collaborative, positive in nature with excellent communication skills.

Whilst the tech experience isn't essential as the emphasis of this position is to work across the business to understand Data objectives and requirements, and partner with the Principle Data Engineer to create Solutions. The core tech stack is Snowflake, AWS, DBT.

Overview of the role:

• Work with Engineering, Product, Data, and Commercial leaders to identify and prioritise architectural opportunities.
• Align data architecture principles with strategic business and technology goals.
• Present architectural findings, roadmaps, and decisions to both technical and non-technical audience
• Define and maintain a coherent data architecture spanning customer, operational, and analytical domains.
• Design semantic models and logical data layers to support trusted reporting and analytics.
• Establish integration patterns between customer platforms and back-office systems (e.g. Finance, HR, CRM).
• Recommend standards for data modelling, master/reference data, and metadata governance.
• Collaborate with engineering, product, and commercial leaders to align architecture with business needs.
• Evaluate third-party APIs and reverse-engineer live system data models as needed.
• Author agile stories and support engineering teams throughout development.
• Support testing, reconciliation, and integration verification activities.

Key Deliverables

• Delivers work packages collaboratively, with clarity on scope, measures of success, and technical integrity
• A comprehensive Enterprise Data Domain Map, aligned with organisational functions and platforms
• Evaluation and recommendation of semantic and physical data architecture alignment across customer and operational systems
• Support the development of the “data passport” concept for existing and new datasets in line with enterprise governance requirements
• Design patterns and integration guidance for evolving our data product strategy
• Collaborate with Data Governance Leads and Data BAs to design semantic models and logical data layers to support trusted reporting and analytics.
• Recommend standards for master data and reference data governance.
• Support adoption of federated governance, metadata management, and lineage tooling
• Support the development and implementation of a “data passport” model — a metadata construct that travels with datasets across the estate, capturing critical attributes such as ownership, purpose, classification, expiry, and governance status to ensure transparency and control.

Key responsibilities:

• Data Architecture Leadership
• Define and maintain a coherent data architecture spanning customer, operational, and analytical domains.
• Work with Principal Data Engineer and other data leaders to design a scalable architecture, ensuring compliance, resilience, and security across cloud-based environments.
• Establish integration patterns between customer platforms and back-office systems (e.g. Finance, HR, CRM).

Core skills and experience:

• Proven experience designing scalable data architectures in cloud and hybrid environments.
• Expertise in data modelling, SQL, and platforms like Snowflake, dbt, Power BI, and Databricks.
• Fluency in Python and knowledge of multiple cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Understanding of security principles including role-based access control.
• Experience with legacy-to-cloud data migration and API integration testing (e.g. using Postman).
• Experience leading data strategy and architecture delivery across complex environments.
• Broad awareness of IT architecture including networking and security considerations.
• Familiarity with Agile methodologies, TDD/BDD, and modern CI/CD practices.
• Strong communication and stakeholder influence skills.
• Practical experience with a major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Hands-on experience with Snowflake and dbt.
• Familiarity with varied data formats including CSV, JSON, and XML.
• Deep understanding of data modelling and data architecture principles