About The Role
Level: 5
Department: CDO
Location: Southampton or London
Contract type: Permanent
The Data Platform Architect role sits within the Chief Data Office (CDO) and reports to the Head of Data Platforms. It plays a pivotal role by owning and managing the data platform reference architecture to support the organization, partnering with stakeholders to incrementally build a usable, reliable, high‑quality data capability and solutions to support business objectives. The role requires a blend of technical expertise, business acumen and collaborative skills across multiple stakeholders.
Key Accountabilities
Technical Oversight & Delivery
* Define and own a multi‑year data platform architecture roadmap supporting business outcomes, specifically data, reporting, advanced analytics and AI.
* Ensure architectural coherence across Fabric, Azure, Databricks and AI environments.
* Establish and maintain the enterprise data platform architecture covering ingestion, storage, compute, orchestration, governance, quality and consumption.
* Translate architecture principles into pragmatic, implementable guidance for engineering and delivery teams.
* Assess and recommend emerging data and analytics technologies and platform features to implement as part of the platform roadmap.
* Conduct design assurance and solution reviews across platform and product squads.
Cross‑Functional Collaboration
* Collaborate with enterprise architects, cloud platform, security and data governance to design holistic services for the business and customers.
* Work closely with platform tenant teams to understand challenges and enable new features and capabilities for the organization.
* Translate business needs and data strategy into architectural blueprints and solution patterns.
* Communicate clearly across technical and non‑technical teams to align on priorities and progress.
Operational Excellence
* Work across the data function with Data Engineering, Platform Engineering, Modelling and Business requirement to curate design patterns for repeatable solution delivery.
* Define architectural principles that optimise reliability, scalability and cost efficiency.
* Define guardrails for resilience, compliance and security‑by‑design.
* Drive continuous improvement in design and solution engineering.
Knowledge and Experience
* Degree in a technical discipline (e.g., computer science, engineering, maths, physics) or equivalent practical experience.
* Proven experience providing architectural leadership and influencing cross‑functional technical teams.
* Strong technical hand on experience designing, building and maintaining data platform in an Azure, Databricks and Fabric ecosystem.
* Experience designing data platforms using Medallion or Lakehouse architecture.
* Strong understanding of data governance: lineage, cataloguing, metadata, RBAC, data privacy.
* Experience with Lambda and multimodal data systems.
* History of delivering overall strategic architecture outcomes through diverse project deliveries.
* Solid grasp of data engineering, business intelligence, artificial intelligence and modern development/deployment techniques.
Skills
* Strategic thinker with curious mindset and strong problem‑solving skills.
* Ability to communicate complex concepts in a clear, concise manner.
* Ability to balance innovation with enterprise constraints.
* Experience in cost‑optimised architecture design for cloud environments.
* Experience in platform architecture across Azure, Databricks, AI Foundry and Microsoft Fabric platforms.
* TOGAF experience is desirable.
Inclusion & Diversity
We value diversity and strive to promote inclusivity in all aspects of our culture. We believe in equal opportunities for all, ensuring that no applicant encounters less favourable treatment based on anything but their skills, qualifications, experience, and potential. We celebrate the unique contributions of a diverse workforce and create a respectful, nurturing environment where every colleague can thrive.
Core Benefits
* Holiday: 182 hours (26 days)
* Quilter Incentive Scheme: all employees eligible to participate in incentive scheme, to incentivise business performance and their contribution.
* Pension Scheme: a non‑contributory company pension scheme that can be boosted through personal contributions.
* Private Medical Insurance: single cover as standard with options to increase cover to include your partner or children.
* Life Assurance: 4× your salary.
* Income Protection: 75% of salary, less state benefits, payable after 26 weeks of absence.
* Healthcare Cash Plan: Jersey employees only.
In addition to our core benefits, we offer a range of flexible benefits to UK employees that you can choose from and pay for conveniently via a salary deduction.
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