Lead Data Architect

Lead Data Architect | Hybrid, 3 days per month, Edinburgh| Starting ASAP

Salary: 83,930

About the role:

The role is to provide leadership for the data architecture, establishing data models, standards and design principles that enable trusted, connected and effective use of data to support organisational priorities and informed decision making.

You will:

• Act as the authority for Data Architecture, providing specialist expertise, thought leadership, and guidance on data design, modelling, and data architecture standards.
• Define, maintain, and evolve the data architecture, ensuring alignment with organisational priorities, data strategy and future business needs.
• Lead the development and maintenance of enterprise, domain, conceptual, logical and physical data models, creating a shared understanding of data across the business.
• Establish and maintain data architecture principles, standards, reference architectures and design patterns that support trusted, scalable, and sustainable use of data.
• Lead data architecture governance and design assurance, providing challenge, recommendations and architectural oversight for significant data initiatives and programmes.
• Provide expert advice to senior stakeholders, influencing decisions through evidence-based recommendations and helping teams understand architectural options, risks and trade-offs.
• Build consensus across teams and programmes, ensuring data architecture standards and principles are consistently applied across platforms, solutions and services.
• Define architecture approaches that improve interoperability, integration, governance, and reuse of data, supporting more efficient and joined-up services across the business.
• Identify and manage data architecture related risks, technical debt and opportunities, ensuring emerging issues are addressed and escalated appropriately.
• Promote data architecture capability and maturity by coaching, mentoring and supporting colleagues, fostering greater understanding and adoption of good architecture practices.

Essential Criteria

• Significant experience defining, implementing and evolving data architectures that support organisational strategy, transformation, and business outcomes.
• Demonstrable expertise in conceptual, logical and physical data modelling, including the development of enterprise and domain level data models.
• Experience establishing architecture principles, standards, governance processes and design assurance that support consistent and effective decision making.
• Strong understanding of data management and governance practises, including metadata, lineage, reference, master data, stewardship, with the ability to embed these principals into data architecture design.
• Experience designing data architecture for modern cloud-based data platforms, data integration patterns, preferably with Microsoft Azure ecosystem and Microsoft Fabric.
• Experience aligning data architecture decisions with organisational strategy, ensuring data models, standards and approaches support current priorities and future transformation.
• Proven ability to influence decisions, build consensus, and secure adoption of standards across teams without direct reporting authority.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts, risks, options and recommendations clearly to technical and non-technical audiences, including senior stakeholders.
• Ability to provide technical leadership through expertise, coaching and collaboration, supporting adoption of good data practise.
• Demonstrable ability to analyse complex issues, evaluate options and make evidence-based recommendations in situations where risk, ambiguity or limited precedent exists.

Desirable

• Experience working within education, skills, public sector or other complex data environments involving data sharing, multiple stakeholders and evidence-based decision making.
• Experience with Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Factory, Databricks, PowerBI semantic models or equivalent technologies.
• Professional qualification or certification in Data Architecture, Enterprise Architecture, Data management, or Data Engineering (e.g. TOGAF, DAMA CDMP, MS Azure Solutions Architect, MS Fabric Data Engineer)