Data Platform Manager

Norton Rose Fulbright; Newcastle upon Tyne; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Norton Rose Fulbright seeks a Data Platform Owner in the UK to lead the firm’s data platform across the EMEA region, building and managing the team to enable data products and insights for the business. You will own the end‑to‑end platform roadmap, oversee architecture and lifecycle, and ensure governance, security and cost management across ingestion, storage and analytics.

Collaboration with risk, privacy and IT is essential.

Qualifications

• Experience leading end-to-end data platform initiatives across design, delivery and operations.
• Strong governance, data quality and security controls across multi‑region data flows.
• Proven ability to translate business needs into data capabilities or products.

Responsibilities

• Own end‑to‑end data platform roadmap, aligning analytics and data science capabilities to business and client priorities.
• Oversee architecture and lifecycle of the data platform including ingestion, storage, analytics and ML.
• Lead hands‑on delivery and operations to ensure platform performance and governance.
• Enable data science and advanced analytics including AI/GenAI within a governed environment.
• Ensure secure access to structured and unstructured data across the organisation.
• Define and enforce data governance, quality and compliance with Risk, Privacy and IT teams.
• Act as the primary business lead for the data platform and collaborate with leaders to translate needs into data capabilities.
• Oversee platform operability, scalability and cost management with engineering/infrastructure teams.
• Manage vendors and capability development to support scalable data science adoption.

Skills

Databricks

Fabric

Lakehouse

Power BI

Delta Lake

CI/CD

DevOps

Azure AD

Data governance

Security

Tools

Databricks

Fabric

Power BI

Delta Lake

Job description

The Role

We have embarked on an exciting programme of strategic importance to the firm. As Data Platform Owner, you will play a crucial role in managing the platform that forms the foundation for the data products the firm is building to support the business across the EMEA Region. The data platform manager will be the focal point for enabling the broader and deeper use of our data to provide insights to the firm. The role will build and manage the data platform team to execute on the firm’s strategy to use data to drive strategic decision making.

The role provides hands‑on delivery and operational support for our data platform, to help ensure that we have a platform that remains performant and responsive to business needs in alignment with data governance standards.

The Team

The role reports to the Senior Integrations, Development and Data manager in the Business Enablement team. It has key relationships with data stewards, data product owners and IT stakeholders. The Business Enablement team ensures that the firm has the tried and tested tools lawyers need to do their jobs efficiently and effectively.

Key Responsibilities

• Willing to get hands‑on managing the platform and getting involved in service delivery as required by the business.
• Own the end‑to‑end data platform roadmap, aligning analytics and data science capabilities to firm, practice group and client priorities.
• Accountable for the architecture and lifecycle of the data platform, covering ingestion, storage, analytics and machine learning.
• Enable data science and advanced analytics use cases including predictive models, experimentation, AI and GenAI within a governed environment.
• Ensure the platform supports secure access to structured and unstructured data, including client, matter, financial and document metadata.
• Define and enforce data governance, quality and compliance, working closely with Risk, Privacy and Information Security teams.
• Act as the primary business and leadership for the data platform, collaborating with business leaders to translate legal and operational needs into data capabilities or products.
• Oversee platform operability, scalability and cost management, working with engineering and infrastructure teams.
• Lead vendor management and capability development, ensuring tools, skills and standards support responsible and scalable data science adoption.

Key Skills and Experience

• Own end‑to‑end EMEAPAC data platform across design, delivery and steady‑state operation.
• Strong understanding of Databricks and Fabric architecture, including Lakehouse patterns.
• Ability to oversee ingestion, transformation and reporting layers across enterprise data flows.
• Working knowledge of Databricks (Delta Lake, pipelines, orchestration) and Fabric (Power BI, semantic models).
• Experience in operating appropriate governance over data quality, lineage, access and cross‑border data controls.
• Operate within structured service wrap, including L1‑L4 support and formal service acceptance.
• Ability to monitor platform performance, reliability and adoption in live operation.
• Strong understanding of security, RBAC and integration with Azure AD and enterprise controls.
• Awareness of cost, performance and scalability trade‑offs across compute and storage.
• Familiarity with DevOps practices including CI/CD, environment management and controlled releases.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

To attract the best people, we strive to create a diverse and inclusive environment where everyone can bring their whole selves to work, have a sense of belonging, and realize their full career potential. We are a proud equal‑opportunity employer and encourage applications from individuals who can complement our existing teams. We strive to create an inclusive and accessible recruitment process for all candidates. If you require any tailored adjustments or accommodations, please let us know.