Data Architect - NCA - SEO

Join to apply for the Data Architect - NCA - SEO role at Manchester Digital.

Location: Belfast; Birmingham; Bristol; Calder (Normanton); Leicester; London*; Warrington.

Note: London-based work will be Stratford for the contractual location; temporary duties may be performed from Vauxhall or another reasonable location during the interim period. Stratford will be your contractual place of work, and moves from a temporary location will not entitle you to payments for travel time or costs under the Relocation and Excess Travel Policy.

The Digital Data and Technology (DDaT) Directorate is responsible for creating a cutting-edge technology and information environment that connects, empowers and enhances our Officers’ crime fighting capabilities. We are responsible for defining and delivering our data and technology strategy, policy and architecture, building and sustaining resilient services which are critical to our mission success. We work closely with our operational teams to help them do their job in the most effective and efficient way, understanding their challenges and combining this with emerging technologies to obtain and exploit data in innovative ways to ensure we stay ahead of the criminals who are committing some of the most serious crimes and inflicting harm to our society.

Are you ready to join the team?

• Provide specialist technical and data support to the Chief Architect, the architecture team and wider NCA stakeholders, taking a lead role on all matters relating to data technologies, including ETL, data integration, enrichment and modelling.
• Provide architectural leadership across the agency’s data landscape, including ownership and ongoing refinement of the corporate data model.
• Define and maintain enterprise-wide data standards, design patterns and best practices, ensuring alignment with the enterprise architecture strategy, HMG policies and recognised industry frameworks.
• Create and maintain a strategic roadmap for the Agency’s data architecture and supporting technologies, ensuring alignment with overall transformation goals and long-term business objectives.
• Lead or assure the design of the data elements of systems and solutions, including database structures, file systems, schemas, metadata models and data flows.
• Establish and promote standards for data quality, integrity and lineage, ensuring there are clear methods for their measurement and improvement.
• Ensure compliance with architectural principles, standards and data governance practices across programmes and projects, escalating exceptions to senior design authorities as necessary.
• Facilitate workshops and consultations with users, data owners and delivery teams to understand user needs, data behaviours and content classification across operational contexts.
• Continuously scan the agency and the external landscape to identify, assess and incorporate developments and trends in data and information architecture.

• Experience leading the data architecture workstream within complex, multi-phase transformation programmes, including defining strategic direction, shaping delivery approaches and assuring technical quality throughout the lifecycle.
• Ability to design and implement scalable, interoperable data platforms that operate effectively across hybrid environments — including on-premises infrastructure, private cloud, and public cloud services — while supporting real-time, transactional and analytical use cases.
• Experience in data modelling across conceptual, logical and physical layers, coupled with a strong grasp of data standards, metadata management, master data management and data stewardship frameworks.
• Understanding of data lifecycle management, from ingestion and processing to archival and destruction, alongside fluency in modern analytics platforms, data warehousing architectures and information security principles relating to sensitive and regulated datasets.

• The ability to make and guide effective technical and data decisions, explaining clearly how the decision has been reached.
• The ability to understand and resolve technical disputes across varying levels of complexity and risk.
• Experience using current and emerging analytical tools and technologies both on-premises and using public cloud (specifically AWS and/or Microsoft Azure).

• Leadership
• Seeing the Big Picture

• Ability to design/implement scalable, interoperable data platforms that operate across hybrid environments, inc. on-premises infrastructure, private cloud, & public cloud services, while supporting real-time, transactional, & analytical use cases.
• Experience leading the data architecture workstream within complex, multi-phase transformation programmes, including defining strategic direction, shaping delivery approaches, and assuring technical quality throughout the lifecycle.

• Mid-Senior level

• Temporary

• Engineering and Information Technology
• Technology, Information and Internet

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