Principal Architect (Data & AI)

Cynozure; Greater London; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Cynozure is seeking a Principal Architect (Data & AI) to anchor major client engagements, shape data and AI architecture, and drive innovative delivery at a fast-growing UK consultancy.

You’ll act as the trusted advisor to executive leadership, set internal standards, and mentor junior architects while shaping reusable IP and reference architectures for scalable impact.

Qualifications

• Senior architect with client-facing experience in consultancy or professional services.
• Deep conceptual and logical data architecture, including enterprise data modelling.
• Hands-on enough to read and challenge builds: SQL and cloud data platforms.

Responsibilities

• Set architectural standards and assurance for engagements.
• Lead architectural authority across major client programs.
• Develop reference architectures and reusable IP for the firm.

Skills

Senior architect experience

Enterprise data architecture

Data modelling

Cloud data platforms

Architectural governance

Tools

SQL

Azure

AWS

GCP

Job description

Join Cynozure as a Principal Architect (Data & AI) and help shape data and AI architecture, lead major client engagements and drive innovation at one of the UK’s fastest-growing data and AI consultancies.

About us

We’re a data and AI consultancy working with enterprise clients on data strategy, modern data platforms, governance, analytics and AI. We’re growing, and we’re moving to a human-first, AI-native delivery model: architects and engineers in charge, agents doing more of the work, and standards that let clients trust both.

The role

We’re reorganising delivery around Principal Architects, each anchoring a group of engagements whose architecture holds together, which makes money, and which the client trusts enough to renew and grow without us selling it again from scratch. That model is being built now, and this role is part of building it.

Externally, you’ll be the trusted advisor to client executive leadership and the senior architectural authority on our largest engagements. Part of that is representing the client’s interest inside the firm, including telling a client when they shouldn’t do what they’ve asked for.

Internally, you’ll set the standards and assurance for the work you lead, help build the reference architecture and reusable IP the rest of the business draws on, and develop junior and mid-level architects and engineers so capability doesn’t depend on any one person, you included.

What you’ll own

Architectural authority and client delivery

• Be the senior design authority across your engagements at the conceptual and logical layer, and make the calls where trade-offs genuinely matter
• Specify, assure and accept (or reject) the work of the roles on your engagements, including associates
• Advise client executives and shape strategy on strategically important accounts
• Decide what agents may do within your engagements, which decisions need a named person, and what the client is told about both
• Lead the architectural response when work escalates

Standards and assurance

• Shape the design standards and ways of working for the work you lead, with governance, security and trust-by-design built in before any individual design is written
• Run assurance across your engagements, including work delivered by associates
• Cut unnecessary variation so delivery is predictable whoever is assigned, and make the call when a design has to change late

Reusable IP

• Help build our reference architecture: target-state models, approved patterns and decision records
• Build at least one asset that carries your expertise into engagements you’re not in the room for, and keep it in use
• Turn what your engagements teach us into propositions, and retire assets nobody uses

People

• Lead and coach juniors and mids to the next level, and tell each of them honestly which path suits them
• Help run the forum where design exceptions are argued and decided, and use design review as the teaching mechanism
• Support hiring, onboarding and associate qualification

Commercial

• Shape and solution strategically important opportunities, and set a consistent estimation basis for the work you lead
• Grow accounts from inside the existing mandate, working with the account and client leads
• Represent us in the market on architecture

What we’re looking for

Essential

• Experience as the senior architect on large client‑facing engagements in a consultancy or professional services firm, the person client executives went to
• Deep conceptual and logical data architecture, including enterprise data modelling
• Hands‑on enough to read and challenge what’s been built: SQL, cloud data platforms on Azure, AWS or GCP, modern engineering patterns
• A track record of setting standards and running design assurance across teams, including partners or contractors
• A track record of developing architects or engineers to the next level
• Experience shaping bids and estimates, including pushing back on one you judged undeliverable
• Credibility in at least one sector, and an appetite to build more
• A practical, considered view of where AI belongs in delivery and where it doesn’t

Desirable

• Data governance, data management, MDM, analytics or AI programmes
• Reference architectures, patterns or accelerators that others adopted
• Managing an associate or partner network
• Sector experience in financial services, insurance, retail, utilities or telecoms
• A public voice on architecture: writing, speaking or community