Lead Data Architect, Data

NatWest Group; City of Edinburgh; On-site; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading banking institution in Edinburgh is seeking a Lead Specialist Architect in Data to define strategic target architectures, promote DevOps practices, and engage stakeholders for impactful data solutions. The ideal candidate will need extensive experience in data platforms and architecture design. This role includes mentoring capabilities and requires a strong understanding of modern data technologies.

Qualifications

• Expert knowledge in data architecture including emerging trends.
• Extensive experience in overseeing architecture designs and reviews.
• Strong software design patterns and modelling experience.

Responsibilities

• Lead the definition of strategic target architecture and roadmap.
• Promote adoption of shared capabilities through playbooks.
• Engage with stakeholders to define and evolve architectures.

Skills

Expert knowledge in architecture design

Knowledge of Cloud technologies

Understanding of event-driven architecture

Experience in microservices

Proficiency in data platforms like Databricks and Snowflake

Agile architecture practices

DevOps practices

Job description

Join us as a Lead Specialist Architect, Data

• We’ll look to you to provide deep expertise to guide the development of our payments data architecture from conceptual to technical, including advising on process design, technology selection and integration approaches
• You’ll contribute to defining the overall architectural vision, strategy, principles, standards and patterns, aligning them with business objectives, and acting as a thought leader for the payments CoE
• This is a chance to actively contribute to the growth of the architecting capability and community across the bank, including thought leadership and sharing knowledge such as best practices, proven solutions and key learnings, and contributing to the community of practice

What you'll do

As a Lead Specialist Architect focused on data, you’ll be leading the definition of the strategic target architecture and roadmap, assuring it’s aligned with the strategy and the bank’s strategic target architecture. You’ll also be promoting and driving the adoption of the shared capabilities available by creating playbooks, educating stakeholders, and collaborating with peers on identifying use cases for adoption.

Your other key responsibilities will include:

• Leading the realisation of data architectures, working as part of development teams throughout the engineering development lifecycle
• Providing technical guidance, resolving architectural impediments, and championing the adoption of architecture patterns and practices
• Partnering and engaging with key stakeholders to define and evolve architectures that deliver business value
• Promoting a DevOps mindset by working as part of development teams to embed architecture guidance in CI/CD pipelines
• Leading with specialism subject matter expertise to assure the quality of data architecture within delivery programmes of high architectural significance or high architectural risk
• Identifying opportunities and threats to current and target architectures, escalating to the Architecture Council for consideration or decision making

The skills you'll need

To make an impact with us, you’ll need expert knowledge in an area of specialism, including a deep understanding of business use cases and emerging trends that drive organisational success. You’ll also need expert knowledge of modern technologies such as Cloud, microservices and AI, along with agile architecture and DevOps practices.

You’ll bring extensive experience of overseeing and assuring the quality of architecture designs, including conducting comprehensive architecture and design reviews to validate that solutions meet business needs and comply with architecture standards, with a focus on risk management and governance. Experience with a wide range of modern data platforms, such as Databricks, Snowflake, Hadoop, MongoDB, S3, data lakehouses, and cloud technologies is required. Experience with AWS is preferred.

Furthermore, you’ll need:

• Strong experience with event-driven architecture and microservices with strong software and enterprise design patterns and modelling
• A proven track record designing scalable, distributed data architectures
• Experience with data product, data lineage and streaming data platforms
• Realtime distributed technology experience as well as Data and information modelling Conceptual and Logical
• High proficiency in engaging with partners from across the business and technology to build collaboration and define architectures that deliver tangible business outcomes
• Experience of crafting compelling business cases to influence senior stakeholders to secure investment for architecture initiatives
• Extensive people capability development experience, including mentoring, supporting professional development, encouraging knowledge sharing across architecture teams and promoting best practices