Principal Data Architect

We are seeking a Principal Data Architect to serve as the leading technical authority for data architecture across our UK Consumer business. This is a senior individual contributor role for a highly experienced architect who combines deep technical expertise with strong ownership, commercial pragmatism and the ability to influence across multiple teams. This is a hands-on architecture role being actively engaged from strategy and design through implementation, adoption and optimisation, helping teams make confident decisions and deliver against a shared architectural vision. You will define the strategic direction for our data ecosystem, shaping the target-state architecture while creating a practical roadmap from today's environment. Working across cloud platforms, data products, analytics, AI and operational systems, you will ensure our architecture enables innovation, scalability, governance and business value.   Key Responsibilities • Own the current-state, target-state and transition architecture for the enterprise data ecosystem. • Define end-to-end architecture across data ingestion, transformation, storage, activation, analytics, AI and data products. • Translate business and product objectives into scalable, secure and maintainable architectural solutions. • Establish architecture principles, standards, reference patterns and governance frameworks that enable engineering teams to deliver efficiently. • Lead data modelling, data governance and standards for quality, lineage, metadata, ownership and lifecycle management. • Provide technical leadership across cloud data platforms and technologies including Snowflake, AWS and associated integration and orchestration tooling. • Define and evolve patterns for batch, real-time, event-driven and API-based data architectures. • Lead complex transformation initiatives including cloud migrations, platform modernisation, data product adoption and legacy decommissioning. • Ensure architecture decisions balance scalability, resilience, security, observability, performance and cost efficiency. • Influence and mentor engineers, architects and technical leaders while building strong alignment across UK and international teams.   • Significant experience in Data Architecture, Data Engineering or Data Platform Architecture within large, complex organisations. • Proven success operating at Principal, Lead Architect or equivalent senior architecture level across multiple domains and teams. • Deep expertise in modern cloud data platforms, particularly AWS, Snowflake or comparable technologies. • Strong experience designing large-scale batch, streaming, event-driven and API-based data architectures. • Advanced knowledge of conceptual, logical and physical data modelling and enterprise data design. • Hands-on experience with modern data tooling such as dbt, Snowplow, Fivetran, orchestration platforms or equivalent technologies. • Experience building and governing data products, self-service platforms and domain-oriented data architectures, with a strong understanding of Data Mesh and federated governance principles. • Proven experience delivering large-scale data transformations, including cloud migrations, platform modernisation, legacy system retirement and operating model change. • Strong understanding of data security, privacy, governance, data quality, metadata, lineage, observability and data protection by design. • Knowledge of the data foundations required for advanced analytics, personalisation, machine learning and Generative AI, combined with excellent stakeholder management, communication and influencing skills. Preferred Experience • Telecommunications, digital products, e-commerce or large-scale consumer-facing environments. Benefits package includes: • Hyb