Data Solution Architect in Southampton

We’re Kingfisher, a team of over 74,000 passionate people who bring Kingfisher and all our other brands – B&Q, Screwfix, Brico Depot, Castorama, and Koctas – to life. Guided by our purpose "Better Homes. Better Lives. For Everyone," we believe a better world starts with better homes and work every day to make that a reality. Join us and help shape the future of home improvement.

As a Data Solution Architect, you will design and govern scalable, secure, AI‑ and data‑driven solutions across a complex European technology landscape. Partnering with product, engineering, and business teams, you’ll translate business needs into end‑to‑end data architectures aligned to enterprise strategy and standards, enabling analytics, reporting, and customer‑facing AI use cases while shaping the future evolution of the data platform. This role will be based out of our Kingfisher Southampton office or the Kingfisher Head Office in Paddington with an expectation of 12 days a month in the office.

Responsibilities

• Own end‑to‑end data solution architecture for major initiatives, from concept through delivery.
• Design and document high‑level and detailed data architectures covering sourcing, integration, storage, processing, and consumption.
• Act as the design authority for data architecture decisions, aligned to enterprise strategy, standards, and governance.
• Partner with product, engineering, and business teams to meet functional and non‑functional requirements.
• Guide delivery teams on data architecture patterns, best practices, and modern data platform choices.
• Ensure compliance with data privacy, protection, and assurance policies.
• Support platform modernisation, data migrations, AI‑enabled solutions, and continuous improvement of the architecture practice.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Proven experience designing end‑to‑end data solutions and large‑scale data migrations in complex enterprise environments.
• Strong data architecture and modelling expertise across relational and non‑relational platforms.
• Experience designing scalable, real‑time data architectures using modern integration patterns (pipelines, APIs, event/streaming).
• Hands‑on experience with cloud‑based data platforms and modern analytics ecosystems.
• Experience designing or enabling AI‑driven data solutions (e.g., RAG, embeddings, vector search).
• Strong stakeholder management skills, able to communicate complex concepts clearly and challenge constructively.

Desirable Experience

• Experience with MDM and CDP platforms (e.g., Stibo, Amperity, Riversand).
• Exposure to data warehouses, data lakes, and lakehouse architectures (e.g., Databricks, Snowflake, BigQuery).
• Familiarity with modern data modelling approaches (Kimball, Data Vault, Medallion).
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and event‑driven/streaming technologies (Kafka, Flink, CDC).
• Knowledge of SAP and D365 data extraction approaches, BI tools (e.g., Power BI), and data governance, privacy, and security.
• Experience working in large‑scale, multi‑brand or multi‑country organisations.

How We Work

We believe in flexibility and balance. Our hybrid model blends home working for focus with time spent connecting and collaborating – whether in our offices or at offsite locations. On average, around 60% of your time will involve in‑person collaboration. We value the perspectives new team members bring and encourage you to apply – even if you don’t meet 100% of the requirements.

What We Offer

An inclusive environment where your potential is limited only by your imagination. We encourage new ideas, support experimentation, and strive to create a workplace where everyone can be their best self. We also offer a competitive benefits package and plenty of opportunities to stretch and grow your career.

Diversity & Inclusion

Our customers come from all walks of life – and so do we. We’re committed to ensuring all colleagues, future colleagues, and applicants are treated equally, regardless of age, gender, marital or civil partnership status, ethnicity, culture, religion, belief, political opinion, disability, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation.