Data Platform Architect in London

We're working with a globally recognised consumer brand that is investing heavily in its enterprise data platform as part of a wider technology transformation. The business is growing its data estate quickly and is looking for an experienced architect to own the next phase of platform strategy.

As Data Platform Architect, you will own the technical architecture of the enterprise data platform, defining the standards, patterns and guardrails that Data Engineers and Platform Engineers build against. You'll work closely with Solution Architects, Data Governance and Cyber Security to keep the platform scalable, secure and cost efficient as it grows. This is a specialist architecture role rather than a delivery or line management role, sitting within a central architecture function that engages flexibly across several data and engineering teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the platform's technical architecture, including compute and storage design, ingestion frameworks, access control, performance tuning and capacity planning.
• Define and maintain architectural standards and guardrails covering naming conventions, environment management, deployment pipelines, partitioning strategies and cost optimisation.
• Own platform cost modelling and FinOps governance, identifying optimisation opportunities and defining cost allocation patterns.
• Design data ingestion architecture across batch, micro-batch and streaming, with clear boundaries for system to system integration.
• Define the architecture for the semantic layer and self-serve analytics infrastructure.
• Define non-functional standards covering resilience, backup and restore, disaster recovery, observability and operational readiness.
• Define platform security and privacy architecture in partnership with Cyber Security and Data Governance, including PII handling, access recertification and audit logging.
• Own the data platform roadmap from an architectural perspective, including legacy system transition planning and platform maturation.
• Represent data platform considerations in enterprise architecture governance forums.
• Maintain comprehensive documentation of design decisions, patterns, standards and trade offs.

Requirements

• 7 to 10+ years' experience in data platform architecture, data engineering or cloud data infrastructure.
• Deep expertise in Databricks (Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, Spark, Databricks SQL) or an equivalent Lakehouse platform, including administration, cost management and performance optimisation.
• Strong understanding of cloud native architecture principles, cost models and CI/CD pipelines.
• Proven experience implementing data security including encryption, RBAC, column and row level security and data masking.
• Experience with SAP data landscapes is highly desirable.
• Experience defining architectural standards that engineering teams implement, comfortable setting direction without hands on delivery.
• Experience working within a centralised architecture function that engages flexibly with delivery squads.
• Strong communication skills, able to translate architectural decisions for both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Hybrid working (4 days/week) from a London office. Competitive pension and bonus scheme.

This is a rare opportunity to take architectural ownership of a large scale enterprise data platform at a well established consumer brand, with real budget and senior backing behind the transformation. You'll have the autonomy to set technical direction, work across a mature but evolving data estate, and shape how the platform supports the next generation of AI and analytics use cases.