Hybrid Data Platform Architect — Scale Global Data Estate

Formula.; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid London office

Pension

Bonus scheme

Job summary

Formula. is seeking an experienced Data Platform Architect to own the enterprise data platform's technical architecture from a London base.

You will define standards, patterns and guardrails, ensuring scalability, security and cost efficiency as the platform grows, working with Data Governance, Cyber Security and Solution Architects. In this central architecture role you will shape the platform roadmap, data ingestion and semantic layer design, plus non-functional requirements like resilience

Qualifications

• 7 to 10+ years' experience in data platform architecture, data engineering or cloud data infrastructure.
• Deep expertise in Databricks (Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, Spark, Databricks SQL) or an equivalent Lakehouse platform, including administration, cost management and performance optimisation.
• Strong understanding of cloud native architecture principles, cost models and CI/CD pipelines.
• Proven experience implementing data security including encryption, RBAC, column and row level security and data masking.
• Experience with SAP data landscapes is highly desirable.
• Experience defining architectural standards that engineering teams implement, comfortable setting direction without hands on delivery.
• Experience working within a centralised architecture function that engages flexibly with delivery squads.
• Strong communication skills, able to translate architectural decisions for both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Hybrid working from a London office.
• Competitive pension and bonus scheme.

Responsibilities

• Own the platform's technical architecture, including compute and storage design, ingestion frameworks, access control, performance tuning and capacity planning.
• Define and maintain architectural standards and guardrails covering naming conventions, environment management, deployment pipelines, partitioning strategies and cost optimisation.
• Own platform cost modelling and FinOps governance, identifying optimisation opportunities and defining cost allocation patterns.
• Design data ingestion architecture across batch, micro-batch and streaming, with clear boundaries for system to system integration.
• Define the architecture for the semantic layer and self-serve analytics infrastructure.
• Define non-functional standards covering resilience, backup and restore, disaster recovery, observability and operational readiness.
• Define platform security and privacy architecture in partnership with Cyber Security and Data Governance, including PII handling, access recertification and audit logging.
• Own the data platform roadmap from an architectural perspective, including legacy system transition planning and platform maturation.
• Represent data platform considerations in enterprise architecture governance forums.
• Maintain comprehensive documentation of design decisions, patterns, standards and trade offs.

Skills

Data platform architecture

Cloud native architecture

CI/CD pipelines

Security & compliance

Stakeholder communication

Tools

Databricks Unity Catalog

Delta Lake

Spark

Cloud cost management tools

Job description

Formula. is seeking an experienced Data Platform Architect to own the enterprise data platform's technical architecture from a London base.

You will define standards, patterns and guardrails, ensuring scalability, security and cost efficiency as the platform grows, working with Data Governance, Cyber Security and Solution Architects. In this central architecture role you will shape the platform roadmap, data ingestion and semantic layer design, plus non-functional requirements like resilience