Data Architect in Portsmouth

About us

Founded in 2008, CitNOW is an innovative, enterprise-level software product suite that allows automotive dealerships globally to sell more vehicles and parts more profitably. CitNOW's app-based platform provides a secure, brand-compliant solution for dealers to build trust, transparency and long-lasting relationships. CitNOW Group was formed in 2021 to unite a portfolio of 12 global software companies leveraging innovation to aid retailers and manufacturers in delivering an outstanding customer experience. We have over 300 employees worldwide who all contribute to our vision to provide market-leading automotive solutions to drive efficiencies, seamlessly transforming every customer moment. The CitNOW Group is no ordinary technology company; we live a series of One Team values and this guiding principle forms the foundation of CitNOW Group's award-winning, collaborative and inclusive culture.

About the role

We’re looking for an experienced Data and Integrations Lead/Architect to define and implement our group-wide, end-to-end data and integration architecture. This is a critical role aligned with our vision for fully connected automotive dealer platforms. You will be accountable for how data is moved, stored, modelled, governed, and consumed across our products and platforms. This is a hands-on, strategic position, responsible for setting technical direction, making key architectural decisions, unifying multiple data architectures and enabling teams to execute effectively against the long-term vision.

Key responsibilities include:

• Data Architecture and Modelling
  • Define and own the data architecture across the organisation, ensuring consistency, quality and accessibility of information
  • Guide how data should be modelled
  • Define standards and blueprints for integration and data architecture
• Data Platform Strategy
  • Provide direction to existing teams on infrastructure choices, tooling and architectural patterns
  • Define how the data platform fits into wider system architecture (AI/ML, reporting, applications, integrations etc)
  • Set standards for ingestion, transformation, storage, and serving of data
  • Balance short-term delivery with long-term architectural health
  • Ensure the platform supports AI/ML readiness
• Integration Architecture
  • Own the integration architecture across internal systems and third-party partners
  • Define how we integrate with external systems (APIs, events, batch, streaming, webhooks, etc.)
  • Decide where data should flow, when it should pass through the data platform, and when point-to-point integrations are appropriate
  • Ensure integrations are resilient, observable, secure, and scalable
• Data flow patterns
  • Establish clear patterns for when (and how) applications should consume from the data platform vs directly via integrations
• Data Governance
  • Define standards for ownership, contracts, versioning etc.
  • Embed data quality, lineage, and observability into architectural decisions
  • Work with teams to ensure data governance enables speed rather than blocking it
• Data security and compliance frameworks
• Leadership
  • Act as the technical authority for the wider data team, reviewing designs and unblocking complex architectural decisions
  • Collaborate across multiple different teams and stakeholders to align priorities
  • Line management responsibilities may be required

We’re looking for experience across the following areas:

• Data architecture
• Data platform design
• Data modelling, cataloguing and associated governance
• Data lakes, distributed storage
• Metadata management
• Experience with Snowflake is preferred
• Integration architecture
• Event-driven architecture patterns (distributed design patterns more generally is an advantage)
• API design, management, and governance
• Extensive experience improving and optimising ETL processes, ideally using IPaaS tooling
• Cloud & Platform Architecture
• Proficient in AWS, but familiarity with Azure/GCP also useful
• Strong understanding of cloud computing principles (and ideally the AWS core services that deliver them)
• IaC literacy (ideally Terraform)
• Architectural Governance
• Establishing architectural patterns without slowing down individual teams or reducing autonomy
• Creation of reference architectures for others to adopt and follow

In addition to a competitive salary, our benefits package is second to none. Employee wellbeing is at the heart of our people strategy, with a number of innovative wellness initiatives such as flexi-time, where employees can vary their start and finish times within our core business hours and/or extend their lunch break by up to 2 hours per day. Employees also benefit from an additional two half days paid leave per year to focus on their personal wellbeing.

We recognise the development of our people is vital to the ongoing success of the business and proudly promote a culture of continuous learning and improvement, along with opportunities to develop and progress a successful career with us. The CitNOW Group is an equal opportunities employer that celebrates diversity across our international teams. We are passionate about creating an inclusive workplace where everyone's individuality is valued.