6-Month contract – Inside IR35 – up to £700 per day
London based – hybrid working – 2/3 days onsite
Candidates must hold current and active SC Clearance
We are seeking a Data Architect to lead the design and delivery of secure, cloud-based data platforms for the client. The role combines architectural strategy with delivery oversight – shaping target-state architectures while ensuring they are implemented pragmatically within regulated, security-conscious environments.
This position will suit an architect who can move comfortably between traditional enterprise data approaches and modern patterns such as lakehouse, streaming, data mesh and ML-enabled platforms – and who values clarity, governance and technical rigour.
active SC clearance
What experience you'll bring:
- Recent experience as a Lead Data Architect / Data Solutions Architect or equivalent senior role.
- Ability to build relationships and operate at a senior stakeholder level with clients.
- Demonstrated ownership of end-to-end data platform design and delivery.
- Experience operating in consulting, systems integration, or delivery partner roles.
- Experience working within the Government sector strongly preferred.
Modern and Enterprise Data Architecture:
You should have practical architecture experience across both established enterprise approaches and modern data patterns, including:
- Azure data systems (must have).
- Oracle / AWS experience is ideal.
- Knowledge of Databricks and Snowflake is ideal.
- Experience of large-scale data migration programmes.
- Data lake and lakehouse architectures.
- Event-driven and streaming architectures.
- Data Mesh and/or Data Fabric principles (applied pragmatically, not theoretically).
- Data product-oriented design approaches.
You understand where traditional patterns remain appropriate – and where modern approaches add measurable value.
- Strong knowledge of distributed processing (e.g. Apache Spark).
- Familiarity with Hadoop ecosystem components.
- Working knowledge of SQL and NoSQL technologies.
- Understanding of ETL/ELT design trade-offs.
- Awareness of DevOps practices and CI/CD for data platforms.
- Understanding of how ML/AI workloads integrate into data architectures.
Hands-on coding ability (e.g. Python, Java, R) is beneficial but not required.
Governance, Security and Data Management
- Experience leading a discovery phase for a data transformation programme.
- Experience designing within structured architectural governance frameworks.
- Familiarity with government assurance processes and design authorities.
- Strong understanding of data governance frameworks and metadata management.
- Experience designing for GDPR and UK public sector data protection requirements.
- Appreciation of infrastructure considerations and security boundaries in regulated cloud environments.
Stakeholder Engagement
- Ability to influence architectural direction at senior stakeholder level.
- Clear and structured communicator — able to explain trade-offs and risks.
- Experience leading and mentoring architects and engineers.
- Comfortable operating within programme governance structures.
- Familiarity with Agile delivery models (SAFe, Scrum, Kanban).
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