Data Migration & Decommissioning Lead

Data Migration & Decommissioning Lead

6-Month Contract | Up to £475 per day | Hybrid (2 Days per Week Onsite) | Basildon, Essex

A large global consultancy is looking for an experienced Data Migration & Decommissioning Lead to support a major enterprise data transformation programme within a complex and highly regulated environment.

This role will focus on establishing the methodology, governance, and delivery framework required to support the retirement and migration of legacy data platforms. You will be responsible for creating a repeatable approach to discovery, dependency mapping, migration planning, and decommissioning readiness across a large-scale data estate.

This is a foundational engagement designed to prepare and enable future migration and retirement activities. The successful candidate will create the processes, artefacts, and operating model needed to support future delivery teams, rather than leading the full decommissioning of the entire estate.

The Role

As the Data Migration & Decommissioning Lead, you will take ownership of establishing a structured approach to legacy system retirement and migration. Working closely with business stakeholders, system owners, architects, and governance teams, you will create visibility of system dependencies, define migration and retirement criteria, and ensure decommissioning activities are managed through a controlled and auditable process.

You will be responsible for proving the approach on a priority system and leaving behind a scalable framework that can be adopted across the wider estate.

Key Responsibilities

• Establish and maintain a comprehensive legacy estate register covering systems, applications, processes, data feeds, consumers, owners, and dependencies.
• Lead discovery and dependency mapping activities across complex legacy data and analytics environments.
• Produce end-to-end system mappings and validate findings with business and technical owners.
• Develop and implement a structured retire, migrate, or retain decision-making framework.
• Define processes covering reconciliation, data retention requirements, business sign-off, cutover planning, validation, and rollback procedures.
• Manage migration and retirement activities through Jira, ensuring clear visibility of milestones, risks, dependencies, and ownership.
• Work closely with business and technology stakeholders to validate dependencies and secure approvals throughout the lifecycle.
• Drive the delivery of agreed migration or retirement milestones.
• Support governance forums through regular reporting and stakeholder updates.
• Create reusable documentation, standards, and frameworks that can be adopted by future delivery teams.

Required Experience

• Proven experience leading data migration, legacy modernisation, decommissioning, or technology retirement programmes within large enterprise organisations.
• Strong background in dependency mapping, discovery, and impact assessment across complex technology estates.
• Experience working with legacy data warehouse, ETL, database, and analytics platforms.
• Hands-on experience creating retirement strategies, migration roadmaps, and decommissioning frameworks.
• Strong understanding of reconciliation processes, data retention requirements, business acceptance, cutover planning, and rollback procedures.
• Experience managing delivery artefacts through Jira, including project plans, dependencies, issue tracking, and milestones.
• Ability to engage senior business and technical stakeholders and secure ownership and sign-off.
• Experience operating within regulated environments, ideally financial services, banking, insurance, or similar sectors.
• Excellent documentation, communication, and stakeholder management skills.

Desirable Experience

• Experience decommissioning data warehouse, ETL, reporting, or analytics platforms.
• Exposure to cloud-based data transformation programmes and modern data platforms.
• Knowledge of enterprise data governance frameworks and change management processes.
• Understanding of regulatory and audit considerations relating to data migration and legacy platform retirement.
• Experience working alongside architecture, governance, and data management functions on large-scale transformation initiatives.