Chief Data Platforms & AI Strategy Leader

Simple Machines; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Simple Machines in London seeks a Director Technology - Data Platforms to lead and shape the data platform strategy across the UK and Europe. You will operate at executive and technical levels, defining propositions, guiding architecture, and driving modern data platforms for an AI-native future.

You will work with global clients, craft solutions, and mentor teams while steering multi-year data platform transformations across enterprise environments.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in data engineering, data platforms, analytics engineering or data architecture.
• Consultancy experience with enterprise clients.
• Strong pre-sales, proposal development, and solution shaping.
• Experience delivering modern cloud-native data platforms at enterprise scale.
• Data products and reusable data capabilities development.
• Deep understanding of data mesh, federated governance, and domain-oriented data ownership.
• Experience designing platforms for AI-native use cases and real-time/data product workflows.
• Knowledge of real-time architectures, streaming data systems and low-latency processing.
• Experience building governable, discoverable, reusable data products at scale.
• Familiarity with modern data stack tech and engineering practices.

Responsibilities

• Part of the Global Data Practice leadership team.
• Define and evolve Simple Machines’ data platform propositions and strategic direction.
• Advise enterprise clients on data platform strategy, architecture and AI readiness.
• Support transition to AI-native, real-time, data product–oriented operating models.
• Collaborate with Engagement Managers and senior leadership on major initiatives.
• Lead architecture and technical direction for complex enterprise data programs.
• Serve as senior technical counterpart in client engagements and partner relations.
• Involvement in pre-sales, proposals, and technical solution shaping.
• Build relationships with technology partners and track market directions.
• Support recruitment, capability uplift, and practice development across engineering.

Skills

Data architecture

Data engineering

Cloud platforms

Databricks

Snowflake

Kafka

Kubernetes

dbt

Airflow

Spark

GCP

AWS

Azure

AI enablement

Stakeholder management

Pre-sales

Tools

Databricks

Snowflake

Kafka

dbt

Airflow

Kubernetes

Spark

GCP

AWS

Azure

Job description

Simple Machines in London seeks a Director Technology - Data Platforms to lead and shape the data platform strategy across the UK and Europe. You will operate at executive and technical levels, defining propositions, guiding architecture, and driving modern data platforms for an AI-native future.

You will work with global clients, craft solutions, and mentor teams while steering multi-year data platform transformations across enterprise environments.