Data Architect - AI - Public Sector

Data Architect – AI – Public Sector - Outside IR35SR2 is supporting a flagship UK government AI initiative and seeking a Data Architect to support the discovery and pilot phase.You’ll lead the data architecture that powers it: modelling content and user data, setting metadata/taxonomy standards, and designing how information is prepared and governed for use in LLM-powered features.What you’ll do

• Define the IA strategy and standards
• Design data models for goals, steps, eligibility, location and services, aligning to user needs and product outcomes.
• Establish data governance
• Design and document data flows into LLMs (grounding/RAG pipelines, chunking, embeddings, vector indexes, prompt/response schemas, evaluation).
• Collaborate with Content & Service Designers, AI Engineers, Product & Delivery to prototype and iterate.
• Embed privacy, safety and ethics
• Produce clear artefacts and runbooks for alpha/pilot and handover.

Essential experience:

• Proven Data Architecture for large digital services
• Hands-on experience feeding data into LLMs/AI apps (RAG, vector stores, grounding, evaluation).
• Strong data modelling
• Practical data governance (quality, lineage, catalogues) and excellent stakeholder skills.
• Knowledge of agentic AI patterns and open interoperability standards (e.g. MCP).

Nice to have

• Government Service Standard, accessibility, and mobile-first delivery experience.
• Active SC clearance.