Lead Data Architect (Grade M1)

Key Responsibilities

• Act as SFCs authority for Data Architecture, providing specialist expertise, thought leadership, and guidance on data design, modelling, and data architecture standards.
• Define, maintain, and evolve SFCs data architecture, ensuring alignment with organisational priorities, data strategy and future business needs.
• Lead the development and maintenance of enterprise, domain, conceptual, logical and physical data models, creating a shared understanding of data across SFC.
• Establish and maintain data architecture principles, standards, reference architectures and design patterns that support trusted, scalable, and sustainable use of data.
• Lead data architecture governance and design assurance, providing challenge, recommendations and architectural oversight for significant data initiatives and programmes.
• Provide expert advice to senior stakeholders, influencing decisions through evidence-based recommendations and helping teams understand architectural options, risks and trade-offs. 
• Build consensus across teams and programmes, ensuring data architecture standards and principles are consistently applied across platforms, solutions and services.
• Define architecture approaches that improve interoperability, integration, governance, and reuse of data, supporting more efficient and joined-up services across SFC.
• Identify and manage data architecture related risks, technical debt and opportunities, ensuring emerging issues are addressed and escalated appropriately.
• Promote data architecture capability and maturity across SFC by coaching, mentoring and supporting colleagues, fostering greater understanding and adoption of good architecture practices. 

Skills & Knowledge

• Significant experience defining, implementing and evolving data architectures that support organisational strategy, transformation, and business outcomes.
• Demonstrable expertise in conceptual, logical and physical data modelling, including the development of enterprise and domain level data models.
• Experience establishing architecture principles, standards, governance processes and design assurance that support consistent and effective decision making.
• Strong understanding of data management and governance practises, including metadata, lineage, reference, master data, stewardship, with the ability to embed these principals into data architecture design.
• Experience designing data architecture for modern cloud-based data platforms, data integration patterns, preferably with Microsoft Azure ecosystem and Microsoft Fabric.
• Experience aligning data architecture decisions with organisational strategy, ensuring data models, standards and approaches support current priorities and future transformation.
• Proven ability to influence decisions, build consensus, and secure adoption of standards across teams without direct reporting authority.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts, risks, options and recommendations clearly to technical and non-technical audiences, including senior stakeholders.
• Ability to provide technical leadership through expertise, coaching and collaboration, supporting adoption of good data practise.
• Demonstrable ability to analyse complex issues, evaluate options and make evidence-based recommendations in situations where risk, ambiguity or limited precedent exists. 

• Experience working within education, skills, public sector or other complex data environments involving data sharing, multiple stakeholders and evidence-based decision making.
• Experience with Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Factory, Databricks, PowerBI semantic models or equivalent technologies.
• Professional qualification or certification in Data Architecture, Enterprise Architecture, Data management, or Data Engineering (e.g. TOGAF, DAMA CDMP, MS Azure Solutions Architect, MS Fabric Data Engineer)