Solution Architect

Quick Facts

• Role: Solution Architect

• Focus: Technical design for a large-scale GCP data platform

• Start: Part-time; scales to full-time

Description

Lead the technical design of a multi-petabyte GCP data platform for an enterprise telecommunications client. Define a lakehouse and medallion architecture using BigQuery, Dataflow, and Pub/Sub, and collaborate with senior client architects as an independent technical voice.

Responsibilities

• Design and own the target-state lakehouse/medallion architecture for a GCP data platform at multi-petabyte scale.

• Translate transformation goals into scalable, secure architecture decisions and delivery roadmaps.

• Define architecture across ingestion, transformation, curation, dataset registration/cataloging, governance, and analytics-serving layers (BigQuery as serving layer; dbt/Looker for transformation and reporting).

• Advise on migration strategy for legacy ETL pipelines (including undocumented, proprietary tooling) into modern lakehouse patterns.

• Evaluate and help select ingestion/transformation tooling (e.g., Fivetran, dbt, Airflow/Composer, NiFi) through proofs of concept.

• Define data governance and cataloging aligned with GCP native capabilities (e.g., Dataplex, BigQuery universal catalog) including metadata, lineage, and access-control design.

• Act as a senior technical reviewer for engineers to ensure architectural consistency, security compliance, and long-term maintainability.

• Present and validate architecture decisions with client executives, enterprise architecture teams, and security stakeholders.

• Operate within client-controlled toolchain and security constraints, including client-approved AI-assisted development environments.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in data architecture, solution architecture, or enterprise systems architecture.

• Hands-on experience architecting data platforms on Google Cloud Platform (BigQuery, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, GCS) at enterprise / multi-petabyte scale.

• Proven experience designing lakehouse or medallion architectures (bronze/silver/gold layering or equivalent).

• Experience defining enterprise data governance frameworks (data quality, lineage, metadata management, access controls, cataloging).

• Experience advising on or leading migration of legacy ETL/data platforms to modern cloud-native architectures.

• Strong understanding of ingestion and transformation tooling such as Fivetran, dbt, Apache Airflow/Composer.

• Experience working directly with enterprise clients as a trusted technical advisor.

• Comfort operating inside a large, security-conscious enterprise with a client-controlled toolchain, including adapting to client-approved AI-assisted development tools.

• Excellent communication and presentation skills for technical, business, and executive audiences.

• Fluent English and comfortable in a daily client-facing role.

• Willingness to travel occasionally (a few days at a time) to the client’s UK office.

Benefits

• Growth support through mentorship, internal TechTalks, challenging projects, and an annual learning budget.

• Competitive compensation with regular performance and compensation reviews.

• Flexibility: 100% remote work with flexible hours.

• Meaningful, modern projects using modern technologies across global teams.

• Collaborative culture with zero micromanagement.

• Well-being and people-focused support tailored to your location.