Enterprise Data Architect - Healthcare in London

The team you'll be working with: We are seeking a hands-on Enterprise Architect with deep experience in healthcare data and platform architectures to support large-scale transformation across the NHS ecosystem. This role sits at the intersection of enterprise governance and practical delivery, requiring strong architectural judgement, technical credibility, and the ability to operate effectively across complex organisational and data landscapes.

The Enterprise Architect will provide architectural leadership across data platforms, analytics, and interoperability initiatives, ensuring solutions align with enterprise standards, national policy direction, and the evolving NHS operating model (DHSC, ALBs, ICBs, Care Providers).

The role requires a strong understanding of data lifecycle management across healthcare, including acute trusts, integrated care systems, and arm’s-length bodies, and familiarity with major national initiatives such as the Single Patient Record (SPR) and DHSC’s Health Data Research Service (HDRS).

What you'll be doing:

• Enterprise & Solution Architecture Leadership
  • Define, maintain, and assure enterprise architecture artefacts including target operating models, reference architectures, roadmaps, and standards across healthcare data landscapes.
  • Provide hands-on architectural direction to delivery teams, ensuring designs are implementable, scalable, secure, and aligned with enterprise principles.
  • Act as a bridge between enterprise strategy and solution delivery, ensuring architectural intent is realised in practice.
• Architecture Governance & Standards
  • Establish and enforce architecture governance, including design assurance, architectural decision records (ADRs), and compliance with delivery standards.
  • Define and maintain architecture patterns, standards, and guardrails across data, integration, cloud, and analytics platforms.
  • Support investment decisions and technology selection through structured architectural assessment.
• Data & Platform Architecture
  • Lead architecture across end-to-end data lifecycles, from ingestion and curation through analytics, research, and consumption.
  • Provide architectural oversight of Secure Data Environments (SDEs) and Federated Data Platforms (FDPs), ensuring compliance with NHS and research governance requirements.
  • Design and govern architectures leveraging Snowflake and modern cloud data platforms.
  • Ensure appropriate separation and linkage between operational, analytical, and research data use cases.
• NHS & Healthcare Domain Engagement
  • Apply deep knowledge of NHS data flows, including acute, community, mental health, primary care, and ALB data sources.
  • Support initiatives aligned to Single Patient Record, population health, and health data research, including HDRS-related use cases.
  • Engage effectively across the evolving NHS organisational landscape, including DHSC, ALBs, ICBs, providers, and national programmes.
• Delivery & Stakeholder Collaboration
  • Work closely with delivery teams (data engineers, platform engineers, analysts, and product owners) to guide solution design and resolve complex architectural issues.
  • Lead and contribute to architecture and design workshops with clinical, operational, and technical stakeholders.
  • Provide pragmatic trade-offs and recommendations balancing policy, risk, cost, and delivery timelines.

What experience you'll bring:

• Architecture & Delivery
  • Proven experience as an Enterprise Architect within large, complex organisations.
  • Strong hands-on experience delivering architectures across data platforms, analytics, and integration landscapes.
  • Demonstrable experience operating architecture governance in live delivery environments.
• Healthcare & NHS Domain
  • Strong understanding of NHS data landscapes, including acute trusts, ALBs, and system-level data flows.
  • Familiarity with NHS Secure Data Environments (SDEs) and Federated Data Platform (FDP) concepts.
  • Awareness of national initiatives such as Single Patient Record and DHSC Health Data Research Service (HDRS).
  • Understanding of the current and evolving NHS organisational model (DHSC, ALBs, ICBs, providers).
• Data & Technology
  • Strong understanding of modern data architectures, including cloud data platforms, data lakes, lakehouse patterns, and analytics platforms.
  • Experience with Snowflake and/or equivalent enterprise data platforms.
  • Solid grasp of data lifecycle management, metadata, lineage, governance, and information security in healthcare contexts.
  • Experience designing architectures across multi-cloud or hybrid environments.
• Professional & Consulting Skills
  • Excellent stakeholder management skills, with the ability to communicate complex architectural concepts clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.
  • Strong analytical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
  • Comfortable operating in ambiguous, evolving environments and influencing without authority.
• Desirable Experience
  • Experience supporting population health management, research analytics, or clinical data platforms.
  • Familiarity with UK health data standards (e.g. FHIR, SNOMED, ICD, OPCS, OMOP, LOINC, DCAT).
  • Experience working with national NHS or DHSC programmes.
  • Exposure to data mesh or federated data ownership models in regulated environments.

What we'll offer you: We offer a range of tailored benefits that support your physical, emotional, and financial wellbeing. Our Learning and Development team ensure that there are continuous growth and development opportunities for our people. We also offer the opportunity to have flexible work options.

We are an equal opportunities employer. We believe in the fair treatment of all our employees and commit to promoting equity and diversity in our employment practices. We are also a proud Disability Confident Committed Employer - we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workforce. We actively collaborate with individuals who have disabilities and long-term health conditions which have an effect on their ability to do normal daily activities, ensuring that barriers are eliminated when it comes to employment opportunities. In line with our commitment, we guarantee an interview to applicants who declare to us, during the application process, that they have a disability and meet the minimum requirements for the role. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know. Join us in building a truly diverse and empowered team.