At a Glance
- Tasks: Design and build a cutting-edge data engine from scratch, shaping the future of audience intelligence.
- Company: Join a dynamic youth-culture media group with a massive reach of over 120 million monthly.
- Benefits: Direct access to the founder, competitive salary, and opportunities for professional growth.
- Other info: Work in a fast-paced environment with no legacy systems to hold you back.
- Why this job: Be a founding data hire and make impactful decisions that drive innovation.
- Qualifications: Experience in data architecture and strong skills in SQL and Python required.
The predicted salary is between 75600 - 92400 £ per year.
Our client is a London-based youth-culture media group whose brands reach an audience of more than 120 million people every month, producing work for 75+ global brand partners. The business is building the next layer of its offering: a first-party behavioural data engine that turns what its audience watches, joins and responds to into structured, consented signal the foundation for the audience-intelligence work that follows. This is a genuine founding appointment. You would be the company's first senior data hire, owning the architecture and technical direction of the data engine end-to-end, with a direct line to the founder/CEO. There is no technical layer above you on this project; the design decisions are yours to own and defend.
The Role
You will design and stand up the data warehouse and ELT architecture, define the behavioural signal schema, and set the data governance model the business will be judged on by clients and investors. You'll work with editorial and social teams to embed data collection into daily content operations, and prepare the datasets that future intelligence and modelling work including a planned AI venture will be built on. You may also scope and hire supporting engineering resource as the function grows.
Responsibilities
- Architect the cloud data warehouse and ELT pipeline strategy: daily automated ingestion from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other platform APIs, Google Analytics, newsletter/CRM and commerce sources.
- Design and evolve the behavioural signal schema spanning attention, engagement, sentiment, intent, trend-adoption dynamics and outcomes with consistent cohort dimensions across sources.
- Set data governance as a product feature: retention windows, consent flags, provenance and audit trail design that will stand up to client and investor scrutiny.
- Work with editorial and social teams to build data collection into the daily content operation without slowing it down.
- Curate a validation benchmark from historical campaign stimulus-to-outcome pairs, structured for future modelling work.
- Define the technical roadmap for the data function, including scoping any future hires.
Qualifications
What We're Looking For
- Architecture-level experience a track record designing, not just implementing, data warehouse and ELT architecture from scratch (e.g. BigQuery or Snowflake with Fivetran, Airbyte or custom ingestion, and dbt).
- Strong SQL and Python, with deep experience integrating third-party APIs, including handling auth, rate limits, pagination and schema drift at scale.
- Data governance expertise — genuine command of GDPR-aware design: retention, consent and deletion architecture, treated as a product feature rather than an afterthought.
- Judgement and communication — able to set technical direction independently, explain schema decisions to non-technical stakeholders, and defend governance design to legal and client audiences.
- Prior experience as a founding or senior data engineer, data architect, or technical lead standing up a data platform from zero is important.
Nice to have: social or media analytics experience, dbt semantic modelling, orchestration tools such as Airflow or Dagster, and a genuine interest in the data foundations behind machine learning and simulation.
Why Apply
- Founding scope — you architect the asset the next phase of the company is valued on, with no legacy systems or technical debt to inherit.
- Real scale from day one, with pipelines feeding channels reaching 120 million+ people monthly.
- A direct line to the founder and to the company's key technical and commercial decisions.
- Genuine growth path as the data and technical function builds out around you.
- Exposure to a founder-led business building a genuinely new, technically ambitious product line.
Data Architect / Technical Lead – Founding Data Hire employer: Exec Capital Recruitment
As a Fractional Business Development Operator at this boutique advisory firm, you'll be part of a dynamic and innovative team that values expertise and collaboration. With a remote working model and flexible engagement, the company fosters a supportive work culture that prioritises employee growth and development, offering you the chance to build essential business infrastructure from the ground up. This role not only provides competitive day rates but also the unique opportunity to shape the firm's future in a high-value, relationship-driven market.
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We think this is how you could land Data Architect / Technical Lead – Founding Data Hire
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We think you need these skills to ace Data Architect / Technical Lead – Founding Data Hire
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show Off Your Projects:In the world of data science, your projects can speak volumes about your skills. Make sure to showcase a few key projects in your CV or portfolio, especially those that highlight your ability to work with data sets, build models, or use relevant tools like Python, R, or SQL. Don’t forget to include links to any GitHub repositories if applicable!
Quantify Your Achievements:Employers love numbers! When drafting your CV, highlight your achievements with quantifiable results. For instance, mention how your data analysis led to a certain percentage increase in efficiency or revenue at a previous job or project. These details can really make your application pop!
Craft a Tailored Cover Letter:For a full-time role at Exec Capital Recruitment, your cover letter should reflect your passion for data science and your excitement about the specific projects or values of the company. Dive into why you’re a good fit, how your skills align with their needs, and any unique perspectives you can bring to the team.
Stand Out with Relevant Courses and Certifications:Although experience talks, relevant courses or certifications can be your ticket to impressing hiring managers at Exec Capital Recruitment. Mention any standout courses you've completed that equipped you with essential skills, such as machine learning certifications or data visualisation courses. This shows your commitment to continuously developing your skills in the field!
How to prepare for a job interview at Exec Capital Recruitment
✨Brush Up on Your Statistics
For a data science role, we need to seriously sharpen our statistics skills. Get ready to tackle technical questions on probability distributions, hypothesis testing, and regression analysis. These are often the bread and butter of data science interviews, so don't just skim over them!
✨Showcase Your Projects
Prepare a killer portfolio showcasing your data science projects. We should include details about the datasets used, the tools and techniques applied, and the impact of your findings. If we can walk them through a particularly challenging project or a cool visualisation that had real-world implications, it’ll really make us stand out!
✨Get Comfortable with Python and R
Most data science positions require us to be proficient in programming languages like Python and R. We should practice common libraries like pandas, NumPy, and scikit-learn, and be ready for live coding exercises or algorithm questions. Showing off our coding chops can really impress the interviewers at Exec Capital Recruitment!
✨Prepare for Case Studies
Expect to encounter real-world case studies during the interview. We might be asked how we’d approach a data problem or analyse a dataset to extract insights. It's essential to think out loud and demonstrate our problem-solving process so that the interviewer can see our logical thinking in action.
