Senior AWS Data Architect (Contract) Length: 3 months (extendable) Day Rate: £450-£500 per day IR35 Status: Inside IR35 Start: ASAP Location: London, Hybrid (2 days onsite) Overview We are looking for an experienced Senior AWS Data Architect to join on an initial 3-month contract, with a strong likelihood of extension. The role focuses on taking full ownership of diagnosing, stabilising, and optimising existing AWS data pipelines and improving overall architectural performance, cost efficiency, and reliability. This position requires a hands?on expert with deep AWS data engineering knowledge and the ability to simplify, optimise, and modernise complex data pipelines. Key Responsibilities Diagnose and resolve performance, reliability, and consistency issues in existing AWS data pipelines. Optimise and refactor pipelines using AWS Glue, Amazon Athena, AWS Lambda, and Apache Iceberg. Simplify existing data architecture to improve maintainability and reduce operational overhead. Assess and advise on converting Iceberg datasets into optimised Parquet formats. Implement solutions to improve pipeline stability and reduce AWS operational costs. Document existing architecture, identify technical debt, and create remediation strategies. Work closely with data engineering teams to drive adoption of best practices and modern design patterns. Required Technical Skills 5 years of hands?on experience with AWS data services, including: AWS Glue (ETL jobs, crawlers, Data Catalog) Amazon Athena (query tuning, partitioning strategies) AWS Lambda (event?driven workloads) Apache Iceberg (schema evolution, table formats, time travel) Deep understanding of Parquet, Iceberg, ORC and performance trade?offs. Proven track record of diagnosing and resolving complex pipeline performance issues. Strong SQL skills and experience with query optimisation. Experience with AWS cost optimisation for large?scale data workloads. Understanding of data consistency models and distributed system behaviours. Preferred Qualifications AWS Certified Solutions Architect or AWS Certified Data Analytics. Knowledge of IaC (Terraform or CloudFormation). Experience with Apache Spark and distributed compute environments. Familiarity with data quality monitoring and governance frameworks.