Senior data architect

2-Year Fixed Term Contract£80,000 - £100,000+ DOEHybrid Working | Edinburgh, Stirling, Bath or London (2-3 days per week)

We're supporting a major UK financial services organisation with the appointment of a Senior Data Architect to play a pivotal role in transforming how data is leveraged across the business.

This is an opportunity for a technically strong architect who can hit the ground running from day one, providing architectural leadership across enterprise data platforms, analytics initiatives, machine learning capabilities and emerging AI solutions.

You'll be responsible for defining and governing data architecture standards, designing scalable data solutions, and ensuring trusted, high-quality data is available to support business decision-making, regulatory obligations and innovation programmes.

• Defining and evolving enterprise, domain and solution-level data architecture

• Designing logical and physical data models for operational, analytical and AI use cases

• Establishing architecture standards, patterns, principles and governance frameworks

• Providing technical leadership and architectural assurance across delivery teams

• Collaborating with stakeholders across technology, data, analytics, security and business functions

• Driving best practice in data governance, lineage, metadata management and data quality

• Supporting strategic data initiatives, investment planning and architectural roadmaps

• Ensuring solutions meet regulatory, security, resilience and performance requirements

• Mentoring teams and promoting strong architectural practices across the organisation

We're seeking an architect with a strong technical background who is comfortable influencing senior stakeholders while remaining hands-on in architecture design and decision making.

You'll ideally bring:

• 3+ years' experience operating in a Senior Data Architect capacity

• Strong expertise in data architecture, data modelling and information management

• Experience designing modern data platforms supporting analytics, reporting and machine learning workloads

• Knowledge of data governance, lineage, metadata management and data quality frameworks

• Experience defining technical standards, patterns and architectural principles

• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills

• The ability to provide architectural leadership from day one

Financial services experience is highly desirable, although candidates from other regulated industries such as insurance, pensions, utilities or healthcare will also be considered.

Particular interest will be given to candidates with experience across:

• Retirement savings and retirement income products

• Wealth, investments or asset management

• Regulatory data environments

• Finance analytics and data value chain transformation initiatives

Exposure to AI, Machine Learning and emerging Agentic AI solutions within enterprise environments would be highly advantageous.

• Strategic architecture role with significant visibility and influence

• Opportunity to shape data strategy, analytics and AI capability

• Long-term transformation programme within a highly respected financial services organisation

• Flexible hybrid working from Edinburgh, Stirling, Bath or London

• Competitive package with flexibility for exceptional candidates

If you're a technically focused Data Architect looking to drive meaningful change across data, analytics and AI within a complex regulated environment, we'd love to hear from you.