Data Platform Architect

Salary: £68,000 - 108,000 per year

Requirements:

• 7 to 10+ years experience in data platform architecture, data engineering or cloud data infrastructure
• Deep expertise in Databricks (Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, Spark, Databricks SQL) or an equivalent Lakehouse platform, including administration, cost management and performance optimisation
• Strong understanding of cloud native architecture principles, cost models and CI/CD pipelines
• Proven experience implementing data security including encryption, RBAC, column and row level security and data masking
• Experience with SAP data landscapes is highly desirable
• Experience defining architectural standards that engineering teams implement, comfortable setting direction without hands on delivery
• Experience working within a centralised architecture function that engages flexibly with delivery squads
• Strong communication skills, able to translate architectural decisions for both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Responsibilities:

• Own the technical architecture of our enterprise data platform, including compute and storage design, ingestion frameworks, access control, performance tuning and capacity planning
• Define and maintain architectural standards and guardrails covering naming conventions, environment management, deployment pipelines, partitioning strategies and cost optimisation
• Own platform cost modelling and FinOps governance, identifying optimisation opportunities and defining cost allocation patterns
• Design data ingestion architecture across batch, micro-batch and streaming, with clear boundaries for system to system integration
• Define the architecture for the semantic layer and self-serve analytics infrastructure
• Define non-functional standards covering resilience, backup and restore, disaster recovery, observability and operational readiness
• Define platform security and privacy architecture in partnership with Cyber Security and Data Governance, including PII handling, access recertification and audit logging
• Own the data platform roadmap from an architectural perspective, including legacy system transition planning and platform maturation
• Represent data platform considerations in enterprise architecture governance forums
• Maintain comprehensive documentation of design decisions, patterns, standards and trade offs

Technologies:

• AI
• Architect
• CI/CD
• Cloud
• Databricks
• RBAC
• SAP
• SQL
• Security
• Spark
• Unity
• GameDev

More:

We are a globally recognised consumer brand investing heavily in our enterprise data platform as part of a wider technology transformation. Our data estate is growing quickly, and we are seeking an experienced architect to own the next phase of platform strategy. This is a specialist architecture role within a central architecture function that works flexibly across several data and engineering teams. We offer hybrid working from our London office, a competitive pension and bonus scheme, and genuine influence over a major enterprise data transformation. This role gives you the autonomy to set technical direction across a mature but evolving data estate and help shape how the platform supports the next generation of AI and analytics use cases.

last updated 36 week of 2026