Principal Data Architect
Python | Cloud | Distributed Systems | AI/ML
Location: London or Glasgow (Hybrid)
The Opportunity
This is a foundational architecture seat inside a company building a globally distributed, AI-native platform from the ground up.
Right now, everything is being rebuilt — how data is captured, structured, governed, and used.
You won’t be inheriting legacy.
You’ll be defining the system others scale on.
What You’ll Actually Be Doing
You’ll own the entire data architecture strategy:
Designing a modern lakehouse on AWS from first principles
Building a real-time data layer from high-frequency, distributed systems
Creating a data model that’s ML-ready on day one
Defining how data flows across multiple global environments
Solving hard problems around consistency, replication, and scale
Turning legal / enterprise constraints into clean technical architecture
This is deep work.
No fluff. No dashboards-for-the-sake-of-it.
The Real Challenge
You’re not just designing pipelines.
You’re building a system that:
Handles massive volumes of unstructured + streaming data
Integrates graph, relational, and vector models in one ecosystem
Powers AI systems directly from live operational data
Scales from one site → global distributed infrastructure
Supports enterprise clients with strict data isolation + governance
Most companies talk about this.
Here, you’ll actually build it.
What Makes This Role Different
Greenfield architecture — not fixing someone else’s mess
Direct access to CTO — decisions move fast
High autonomy — you own the “how”
Real technical depth — distributed systems, not surface-level data work
AI-native by design — not bolted on later
What We’re Looking For
You’re probably already operating at this level:
Designing distributed data systems across teams or regions
Deep in Python + cloud (AWS)
Comfortable with streaming / telemetry data at scale
Strong with Postgres and modern data patterns
Experience with graph or vector databases
You understand:
Data governance & tenancy
Replication & consistency trade-offs
Secure data sharing across organisations
You don’t need to come from a specific industry.
But you do need to be comfortable operating in complex, high-ambiguity environments.
Why It’s Worth a Conversation
If you’re an architect who:
Is bored of incremental improvements
Wants to build something properly from scratch
Enjoys solving hard, non-obvious problems
And wants real ownership over a system that will scale globally
…this is one of those roles.
For more info, please contact OR share your updated CV to