Snowflake Data Platform Architect - Contract (London/Manchester)

Insight Investment are looking for a Data Platform Architect to join our growing team building our strategic data platform as we look to adopt best in class data governance and democratise data around the business. The successful candidate will play a pivotal role in shaping and executing our data strategy, leveraging our data assets to the full, elevating our decision-making, streamlining processes, and driving innovation within our organisation.

You will be part of the long-standing Data Platform team using an Agile approach to deliver solutions on top of our Cloud Platform, starting with Snowflake as a foundational component. We will look to integrate other technologies and grow capability to meet the demands of the business. You will work closely with a variety of business areas and be involved in all aspects of the secure system development life cycle (S-SDLC). We operate in a collaborative and inclusive environment, where each team member's expertise is valued. Our culture emphasises open communication, mutual support, and a shared commitment to delivering exceptional results. We foster a learning culture, providing opportunities for growth and innovation while maintaining high standards of professionalism and integrity.

Role Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the architectural vision for the Snowflake centric Data Platform, ensuring scalability, resilience, and alignment with enterprise data strategy.
• Oversee and manage the integration of Snowflake with a cloud platform, using various available services or introducing new ones to enhance data flow, management, and storage.
• Showcase our platform's adherence to DCAM standards across multiple domains, such as data ingestion, transformation, cataloguing, and lineage tracking.
• Design and implement cost-efficient architectural patterns to optimise resource utilisation and ensure scalable and budget-conscious data processing workflows.
• Provide architectural oversight for platform enhancements, integrations, and performance optimisation.
• Champion best practices in data architecture, including metadata management, data quality, and access control.
• Engage with stakeholders across business and technology to understand requirements and translate them into scalable platform capabilities.
• Support the onboarding of new data domains and analytical use cases, ensuring alignment with platform standards.
• Align technical designs with internal privacy and security policies.

Experience Required

• Extensive experience in architecting and scaling data platforms centered around Snowflake, integrated with Microsoft Azure.
• Understanding of modern data architectures such as Data Mesh, Lakehouse, and ELT.
• Expertise in designing hybrid compute strategies to complement Snowflake's virtual warehouses and minimise cost exposure.
• Familiarity with DCAM or equivalent data governance frameworks.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code in Azure, such as Terraform.
• Knowledgeable in CI/CD pipeline implementations.
• Strong understanding of Agile delivery environments and iterative development within cross-functional teams.
• Demonstrates initiative and independence in problem-solving.
• Effective in communicating abstract or complex ideas and solutions.
• Adheres to software engineering principles focused on quality and correctness.
• Motivated to continuously improve knowledge and drive the adoption of new technologies or approaches within teams.
• Takes ownership of mistakes, collaborates with colleagues to address them, learns from them, and implements long-term improvements.
• Exposure to financial services or regulated environments is advantageous but not essential.
• Streaming and related technologies such as Apache Kafka, Azure Event Hub.
• Integration with Collibra.
• Proficiency in Python.

Insight Investment is committed to being an inclusive employer and encourages applications from all suitably qualified applicants irrespective of background, circumstances, age, disability, gender identity, ethnicity, religion or belief and sexual orientation.