Senior Data Architect - Office for National Statistics - G7

Location: The ONS operates a flexible hybrid working model across the UK, with colleagues linked to one of our contractual locations working between office and remote throughout the week. The locations for this role are Newport and Titchfield (Fareham). All colleagues are required to work from their contractually allocated site for at least 40% of their working time. The induction process for the role will be conducted in person.

About the job:

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK's largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime and migration. ONS will be designing, planning, and delivering a mandatory, questionnaire-based, whole-population census of England and Wales in 2031. The data collected helps shape public services, guide policy decisions, and support long-term planning across government and society.

We're recruiting a Senior Data Architect to join our Data Growth and Operations (DGO) Directorate. DGO provides the statistical infrastructure and foundational frameworks that enable the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the Government Statistical Service (GSS) and the wider research community to make better, more effective use of data. DGO is structured into three divisions:

• Data Architecture, Location and Integration (DALI) ensure that data is organised and referenced so that it can be accessed quickly and used appropriately by the organisation.
• Data Acquisitions co-ordinates requirements for new data, bringing it into the ONS environment and making it available across the organisation.
• Data Engineering and Operations (DEOD) prepare data for analytical use and administrate our core data analysis platforms.

This campaign is for external candidates who wish to be based at either our Newport or Titchfield site. Therefore, this campaign has been linked with the internal advert 456354. If you are an internal candidate to ONS please apply via the other campaign. The selection and interview process will be combined, so you do not need to apply to both campaigns.

Job description:

As a Senior Data Architect, you will be responsible to deliver the data models, data journeys, understand/capture the data (and metadata) management including data governance specifications and mechanisms, identify data transformations, ensure data/technical standardisation, define data volumes and high level non-functional requirements, define the supplier interfaces and obtain clarity on how administrative data fits into the end-to-end journey.

Responsibilities:

• Work across stakeholders, including service design and technical teams to ensure data architecture plays a key role in the design of an end-to-end census data journey.
• Lead on data architecture contributions to support the design and development of a census data pipeline.
• Contribute to the design and delivery of our Enterprise Metadata Management programme.
• Participate in cross-government data architecture communities, to help set direction and share your expertise.
• Champion the work of the DALI division across ONS.
• Contribute to the ongoing implementation of the ONS data strategy (including data principles, policies and standards) and provide advice to stakeholders on how to comply with the strategy.
• Line management of a small team one or two data architects or apprentices, and/or matrix management technical work.
• Play a role in the Data Architecture branch leadership team, particularly supporting the development of technical capabilities of your colleagues.

Person specification:

Essential Criteria:

• Communicating between the technical and the non-technical (Practitioner) - Listen to and interpret the needs of technical and non-technical stakeholders, and manage their expectations. Manage active and reactive communication, support or host difficult discussions within the team or with diverse senior stakeholders.
• Data Modelling (Practitioner) - Produce relevant data models across multiple subject areas. Explain which models to use for which purpose. Understand industry-recognised data modelling patterns and standards, and when to apply them. Compare and align different data models.
• Metadata Management (Practitioner) - An ability to design a metadata repository/service, suggest design changes to improve metadata repositories/service, ensure application of metadata standards, advise less experienced members of the team about metadata management.
• Data Standards (Practitioner) - Create data standards for different subjects and ensure senior leaders understand them. Work with subject matter experts across the organisation to introduce data standards best practice. Monitor compliance with policies and standards in the organisation. Make recommendations about how the organisation should resolve breaches of standards.
• Communicating Data (Awareness) - Understand the appropriate media to communicate findings. Shape communications for the audience.