Principal Enterprise Architect in Cardiff, Wales

Join Companies House as a Principal Enterprise Architect (Data), a leading role within our Enterprise Architecture team at the heart of a nationally significant organisation. This is a high-impact, senior technical role where you will shape the data architecture underpinning services used at scale by millions of users. Companies House handles around 14 million search requests daily, supporting members of the public, businesses, law enforcement and government organisations. The decisions you make will directly influence how trusted data is designed, governed and reused across the organisation.

This role offers the opportunity to work with modern cloud technologies, microservice architectures and complex legacy environments, while setting the technical direction for enterprise-level data architecture. You will act as a technical leader, guiding delivery teams, influencing strategic decisions and ensuring data is treated as a critical enterprise asset.

At Companies House, our aim is to be the best Registry of Companies in the world. We achieve this through brilliant people, using brilliant systems, to deliver brilliant services. If you are an experienced data architect looking for a role where your expertise can make a visible, national impact, this is an opportunity to lead, influence and shape the future of data at scale.

Why choose Companies House? At Companies House we take a proactive approach to wellbeing by promoting a welcoming culture, healthy work life balance and supporting colleagues to be their best in work because we know people are the key to our success. Our benefits include:

• Flexible working with no core hours (6am - 8pm flexible options)
• 30 days annual leave
• 8 bank holidays & 1 privilege day
• Enrolment into Civil Service Pension scheme average 28.97%

Please note: Companies House cannot offer Visa sponsorship to candidates through this campaign. Security Clearance is an essential requirement for this campaign. You'll need to have been in the UK for at least 3 out of the last 5 years to be eligible to apply for SC. You will be based at either our Cardiff or Edinburgh office, where you will be expected to attend on a regular basis. Remote contracts may be considered as an exception whereby commuting to the office location of your team is not reasonably practicable.

The Principal Enterprise Architect (Data) is a senior technical leadership role responsible for defining, governing and evolving the organisations enterprise data architecture. The post holder will ensure that data architecture supports Companies Houses strategic priorities, enables secure and trusted use of data, and strengthens interoperability across legacy, modern and third-party systems.

You will join a small, high-performing and collaborative team that values open thinking, professional challenge and continuous improvement. Working closely with colleagues across the Digital and Data directorates, as well as senior business stakeholders, you will help design and assure robust, secure and resilient data solutions that support organisational priorities and long-term transformation.

You will act as the authoritative voice on enterprise data architecture, providing clear direction, assurance and guidance across programmes and projects. You will treat data as a managed enterprise asset with clear ownership, robust lifecycle controls and measurable business value. This is a highly collaborative role, working with senior stakeholders, architects, delivery teams and governance forums to reduce risk, improve data quality and enable scalable, reusable data solutions.

Key responsibilities

• Lead the development and maintenance of the enterprise data architecture and roadmap, aligned to organisational strategy and change portfolios.
• Define and maintain enterprise-level data models (conceptual and logical, and where appropriate physical).
• Establish canonical data definitions, domain boundaries and integration patterns to support reuse and interoperability.
• Provide architectural assurance to ensure solutions align with agreed data architecture principles.
• Support the identification, valuation and prioritisation of critical data assets to maximise value and return on investment.

Standards, governance and assurance

• Create, publish and maintain enterprise data standards, patterns and guidelines.
• Chair or contribute to data governance forums and architecture review boards.
• Approve, manage or escalate deviations from agreed data standards.
• Ensure data governance policies (including classification, access and retention) are embedded in delivery.
• Identify data-related risks and compliance impacts and support appropriate mitigation.

Data quality and management

• Promote strong data quality, metadata and master data management practices.
• Define data quality indicators and frameworks for measurement and improvement.
• Drive adoption of data ownership and stewardship across the organisation.
• Ensure effective data lifecycle management from creation through to archival.

Operational and delivery support

• Support programmes and projects to translate business needs into robust and compliant data designs.
• Provide specialist data architecture advice to solution architects and development teams.
• Assist with complex data migrations, legacy transformations and API-based integration approaches.
• Support data platform and tooling decisions, ensuring alignment with enterprise standards.

Security, compliance and collaboration

• Ensure data architecture supports the secure handling of personal, sensitive and restricted data.
• Align data designs with legal, regulatory and policy requirements, including data protection legislation.
• Work closely with security architecture colleagues to ensure secure data flows and access controls.
• Advocate data-driven decision making and provide mentoring and guidance to colleagues across the organisation.

Person specification

We're looking for the following skills:

• Significant experience working as an enterprise or senior data architect within complex organisations.
• Strong experience in enterprise data modelling, data governance and data architecture design.
• Experience working within large-scale, hybrid environments, including legacy systems, cloud platforms and third-party services.
• Demonstrable experience designing and assuring data integration solutions, including APIs and distributed services.
• Knowledge of data quality, metadata management, master data management and data taxonomy approaches.
• Experience working with data standards and structured reporting formats (for example XBRL, iXBRL, JSON Schema or OpenAPI).
• Strong understanding of data security, privacy and risk, including secure handling of personal and sensitive data.
• Professional certifications or qualifications in architecture or data disciplines (for example TOGAF, DAMA, CDMP).
• Cloud platform data certifications (for example AWS, Azure or Google Cloud).
• Experience with modern data platforms, analytics ecosystems and data tooling.

Leadership and ways of working

• Proven ability to engage, influence and challenge a wide range of stakeholders, including at senior levels.
• Ability to balance immediate delivery needs with longer-term strategic architectural vision.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capability, with the confidence to make and defend architectural decisions.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical audiences.
• Experience working collaboratively across organisational and disciplinary boundaries.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Seeing the Big Picture
• Working Together
• Communicating and Influencing
• Changing and Improving

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Data Architecture

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £58,531, Companies House contributes £16,956 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. We believe that our success is driven by the well-being and satisfaction of our team members at all levels of the organisation. At Companies House we're committed to providing a comprehensive benefits package that goes beyond the ordinary, ensuring your career journey with us is not only fulfilling, but also rewarding. We pride ourselves on offering a quality work-life balance with our employee wellbeing being central to our working practices.

We celebrate diversity

As an equal opportunity employer, we celebrate diversity, being committed to ensuring we're representative of the citizens we serve and creating an inclusive environment. Everyone in Companies House brings something different, and so will you. To fulfil our commitment to recruiting and attracting diverse talent we welcome applications from underrepresented groups. We also welcome applications from Welsh speakers. We are proud to be a disability confident leader. Our recruitment process is fully inclusive and we can make adjustments as needed through our process.

Where will you be working?

We are currently using a hybrid approach to the way we work which provides opportunities for you to be adaptable in the way you work so that you can achieve a healthy balance between your work and home life. The degree of choice you have will depend on your role and your day-to-day work activities. Your manager will agree regular patterns of attendance with you; however, you may be required to make yourself available to attend the office more frequently when required to meet business needs. You could be based at either our Cardiff or Edinburgh office, and a hybrid employment contract will be provided as the standard offering. However, remote contracts may be considered as an exception whereby commuting to the office location of your team is not reasonably practicable.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles, and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills. What will the process look like:

• Stage 1 Sift: An initial sift of applications will be carried out to create a shortlist.
• Stage 2 - Interview: Companies House uses a blended interview technique, allowing us to find out more about you.