Data Architect

Principal Data Architect (MDM) - Inside IR35 Contract

Hybrid/Remote Working

Day Rate up to 500 p/d with some flexibility

We are seeking an experienced Data Architect to lead the design, implementation, and governance of enterprise data solutions. This role will emphasize operational data use cases designing data flows that support day-to-day business operations, core applications, and real-time services while also ensuring robust analytical and reporting capabilities. The ideal candidate will have to be a senior data leader with proven experience in engaging senior data / business / IT stakeholders, strong background in enterprise architecture, data strategy, and cloud technologies, with the ability to align both operational and analytical data initiatives with business objectives.

Key responsibilities

• Define and implement enterprise data architecture, ensuring alignment with both operational and analytical business needs.
• Lead domain-driven data modeling efforts across conceptual, logical, and physical layers to ensure data designs reflect business domains and processes.
• Define and oversee Master Data Management (MDM) strategies, including tool selection, vendor evaluation, implementation, and adoption across the enterprise.
• Establish and maintain reference data management frameworks and governance processes.
• Develop and execute data strategies, including future state architecture, data governance, metadata management, data privacy, reference data management, and data integration.
• Lead the design and review of data architectures for both operational platforms (APIs, event streams, transactional systems) and analytical platforms (data lakes, warehouses, reporting).
• Establish and enforce data architecture standards, principles, and best practices across operational and analytical domains.
• Drive adoption of governance frameworks, data quality practices, and remediation of technical debt.
• Collaborate with application, integration, and analytics teams to deliver end-to-end data solutions.
• Evaluate and select tools for operational integration (streaming, APIs, MDM) and analytical processing (warehouses, BI platforms).
• Design and maintain conceptual, logical, and domain models spanning both transactional and analytical data.

Skills

• Solid xperience in enterprise data architecture, data strategy, and cloud architecture and roadmap development of data transformation programme.
• Expertise in operational data use cases: real-time data processing, APIs, messaging/streaming (Kafka, Pub/Sub, MQ), MDM, and transactional data flows.
• Strong background in data modeling (conceptual, logical, physical) with a focus on domain-driven design (DDD).
• Proven ability to select, implement, and scale Master Data Management (MDM) solutions, including strategy definition, vendor assessment, and governance adoption.
• Experience establishing reference data management and data quality practices at enterprise scale.
• Knowledge of analytical data architectures: data lakes, warehouses (e.g., Snowflake, BigQuery), BI/reporting, and ETL pipelines.
• Proficiency in public cloud platforms (AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure).
• Experience with both transactional RDBMS and modern distributed/cloud-native databases.
• Familiarity with reporting and analytics tools (e.g., Tableau, Data Studio, Business Objects, Cognos, R).
• Skilled in architecture methodologies such as TOGAF

Qualifications

• Bachelors degree in engineering, Computer Science, or related field (Masters preferred).
• Professional certifications such as CDMP (DAMA), Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect, Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert, or equivalent

Experience

• Previous roles in large-scale enterprise environments.
• Experience in designing and implementing data solutions for operational resilience.
• Track record of delivering enterprise data capability models, domain-driven architectures, and MDM strategies.