Principal Data Architect

Principal Data Architect - AI, Robotics & Scientific Platforms

Location - London or Glasgow.

This is your chance to join a high-growth deep-tech company building a next-generation platform at the intersection of AI, robotics, and scientific discovery.

You’ll play a key role in designing and owning the core data architecture that powers a globally distributed network of automated laboratories, shaping how data is captured, structured, and used to drive AI-led innovation.

Why Join

• Build the data backbone of a global AI-driven scientific platform.
• Work on complex, high-impact challenges across distributed systems, real-time data, and AI infrastructure.
• Be part of a fast-scaling, collaborative team working at the frontier of robotics, data, and science.
• Gain real ownership in defining data architecture, governance, and platform strategy from the ground up.

What You Will Be Doing

• Design and implement a scalable, ML-ready data architecture across scientific and operational systems.
• Build a data lakehouse on AWS to handle large-scale, unstructured data (sensor data, logs, experimental outputs).
• Architect real-time streaming pipelines (e.g. MQTT/event-driven systems) for high-frequency telemetry.
• Design distributed data systems that synchronise edge (lab) and cloud environments globally.
• Develop graph and semantic data models for complex, highly relational datasets.
• Integrate vector databases to enable large-scale similarity search and AI use cases.
• Define data governance frameworks, including tenancy, security, and compliance.
• Enable secure, scalable data sharing across enterprise customers and external partners.
• Help shape internal data standards, architecture patterns, and long-term platform strategy.

About You

• 8+ years experience in Data Architecture / Data Platform Engineering.
• Strong Python experience in production data systems.
• Deep experience with PostgreSQL (ideally AWS RDS).
• Proven experience building distributed data systems at scale.
• Strong understanding of streaming / event-driven architectures (e.g. MQTT, Kafka).
• Experience working with high-volume telemetry / IoT / time-series data.
• Comfortable operating as a hands-on, senior individual contributor.

Nice to Have

• Experience with graph or vector databases (Neo4j, Pinecone, pgvector).
• Background in data governance, multi-tenancy, or secure data sharing.
• Exposure to scientific, robotics, or manufacturing data environments.
• Familiarity with modern data stacks (lakehouse, streaming, real-time pipelines).
• Experience in regulated environments (SOC 2, ISO 27001).

Interested?

Apply now or reach out directly at shubhangi@akkar.com. We’re moving quickly!