PERM - Senior Data Architect - #2159226

Senior Data Architect | Permanent | Up to £150,000 + Bonus

Location: Hybrid – London (3 days per week on-site)
Salary: Up to £150,000 + c.20% bonus + additional benefits
Employment: Permanent

We're supporting a major UK financial services organisation as they undertake a significant programme of data architecture modernisation and transformation, alongside substantial investment in their wider Data & AI capabilities.

We're looking for an experienced Senior Data Architect who combines deep technical expertise with the ability to shape enterprise-scale data architecture, challenge existing approaches and influence engineering direction across multiple teams.

This is a high-impact opportunity to help modernise a complex data estate, establish scalable architectural patterns and support the development of new data products.

Crucially, we're looking for someone who combines strategic architectural thinking with genuine technical depth and understands the practical realities of engineering and delivery.

The opportunityYou'll play a central role in shaping the organisation's future data architecture, supporting the modernisation of thousands of existing data pipelines and helping establish the foundations for scalable, reliable data delivery.

Working closely with senior engineering stakeholders, you'll influence architectural decisions, define technical standards and ensure solutions support both immediate transformation requirements and longer-term business objectives.

Key responsibilities:

• Providing senior technical leadership across complex data architecture and transformation initiatives.
• Designing and shaping enterprise-scale data architectures across AWS.
• Defining architectural approaches for large-scale data migration, modernisation and integration.
• Designing scalable batch and streaming data architectures, ensuring performance, reliability and maintainability.
• Establishing architectural standards, reusable patterns and engineering frameworks.
• Providing technical guidance across Spark, PySpark, AWS Glue, Airflow and associated technologies.
• Supporting the architecture and development of new data products.
• Collaborating with engineering teams to translate architectural designs into practical, deliverable solutions.
• Challenging existing technical approaches and influencing senior stakeholders across the organisation.
• Ensuring architectural decisions meet the security, resilience and governance requirements of a highly regulated environment.

What we're looking for

• Extensive experience designing and delivering large-scale enterprise data architectures.
• Deep expertise across the AWS data ecosystem, including AWS Glue and associated data services.
• Strong technical understanding of Apache Spark, PySpark and Apache Airflow.
• Proven experience designing complex batch and streaming data processing solutions.
• Experience supporting major data transformation, migration or modernisation programmes.
• Strong understanding of data integration, orchestration, performance optimisation and scalable architectural patterns.
• Experience operating at Senior, Principal or Lead Data Architect level within complex enterprise environments.
• Ability to independently shape technical direction, challenge engineering decisions and influence multiple teams.
• Strong communication skills and experience engaging with senior engineering and technology stakeholders.

Experience with Snowflake, modern data products and financial services or another highly regulated environment would be particularly beneficial.

Why consider this opportunity?

This is an opportunity to take a senior architectural role within an organisation making a significant investment in modernising its data estate and expanding its internal Data & AI capabilities.

You'll have the opportunity to influence enterprise-wide architectural decisions, work on technically complex transformation initiatives and help establish the foundations for the organisation's future data engineering capabilities.

We're particularly interested in architects who can combine big-picture architectural thinking with deep technical knowledge — individuals who understand how complex data platforms should be designed and can work closely with engineering teams to ensure those designs are successfully delivered.

The permanent nature of the position offers the opportunity to take long-term ownership of architectural direction and play a meaningful role in a major enterprise transformation.

Salary: Up to £150,000 + c.20% bonus and additional benefits

If you're an experienced Senior or Principal Data Architect looking to shape the future of enterprise data architecture within a complex, technology-driven organisation, we'd be keen to speak with you.