Role: Senior Data Platform Architect (Contract)
Duration: 6 months+
IR35: Inside
Start: January
Location: Remote (occasional on-site as required)
Overview
A large organisation is maturing its modern cloud-based data platform built on Snowflake and Azure. They have strong leadership, product ownership, and capable data engineering teams but require a hands-on senior specialist to define and implement key elements of the target platform architecture.
This role is execution-focused - ideal for a senior individual contributor with deep technical expertise who can accelerate delivery, improve platform engineering standards, and guide teams from within.
Key Responsibilities
* Define, refine, and implement the target technical architecture across Snowflake, Azure, and associated integration layers.
* Lead hands-on engineering across IaC, CI/CD, platform automation, access control, and metadata/lineage implementation.
* Integrate the data platform with broader application and cloud services, ensuring secure, scalable, and reliable data movement.
* Improve platform performance, cost efficiency, monitoring, and operational resilience.
* Translate requirements from product owners and technical stakeholders into scalable solution designs.
* Support the onboarding of additional data domains, workloads, and analytical use cases.
* Troubleshoot platform-wide issues and design durable, long-term fixes.
* Provide technical oversight, engineering guidance, and best-practice coaching without acting as a manager or strategist.
Required Experience
* Proven experience building, scaling, and operating modern cloud-based data platforms using Snowflake and Azure.
* Strong hands-on skills in:
* Terraform (Azure + Snowflake IaC)
* CI/CD (Azure DevOps / GitHub Actions)
* Azure Data Services (ADF, Functions, Key Vault, Event Hub, etc.)
* ELT patterns and data pipeline orchestration
* Strong understanding of platform security, RBAC/ABAC, governance-enabling patterns, and data quality foundations.
* Broad experience across integration, platform automation, pipelines, metadata, observability, and cost management.
* Ability to work independently in complex environments with both legacy and modern components.
* Clear communicator who can articulate architectural decisions to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.