Principal Data Architect

Principal Data Architect

Python | Cloud | Distributed Systems | AI/ML

Location: London or Glasgow (Hybrid)

The Opportunity

This is a foundational architecture seat inside a company building a globally distributed, AI-native platform from the ground up.

Right now, everything is being rebuilt — how data is captured, structured, governed, and used.

You won’t be inheriting legacy.

You’ll be defining the system others scale on.

What You’ll Actually Be Doing

You’ll own the entire data architecture strategy:

Designing a modern lakehouse on AWS from first principles

Building a real-time data layer from high-frequency, distributed systems

Creating a data model that’s ML-ready on day one

Defining how data flows across multiple global environments

Solving hard problems around consistency, replication, and scale

Turning legal / enterprise constraints into clean technical architecture

This is deep work.

No fluff. No dashboards-for-the-sake-of-it.

The Real Challenge

You’re not just designing pipelines.

You’re building a system that:

Handles massive volumes of unstructured + streaming data

Integrates graph, relational, and vector models in one ecosystem

Powers AI systems directly from live operational data

Scales from one site → global distributed infrastructure

Supports enterprise clients with strict data isolation + governance

Most companies talk about this.

Here, you’ll actually build it.

What Makes This Role Different

Greenfield architecture — not fixing someone else’s mess

Direct access to CTO — decisions move fast

High autonomy — you own the “how”

Real technical depth — distributed systems, not surface-level data work

AI-native by design — not bolted on later

What We’re Looking For

You’re probably already operating at this level:

Designing distributed data systems across teams or regions

Deep in Python + cloud (AWS)

Comfortable with streaming / telemetry data at scale

Strong with Postgres and modern data patterns

Experience with graph or vector databases

You understand:

Data governance & tenancy

Replication & consistency trade-offs

Secure data sharing across organisations

You don’t need to come from a specific industry.

But you do need to be comfortable operating in complex, high-ambiguity environments.

Why It’s Worth a Conversation

If you’re an architect who:

Is bored of incremental improvements

Wants to build something properly from scratch

Enjoys solving hard, non-obvious problems

And wants real ownership over a system that will scale globally

...this is one of those roles.

For more info, please contact OR share your updated CV to mahanthi@Lsarecruit.co.uk