Data Platform Architect

Quick Facts

• Role: Data Platform Architect (Solution Architect)
• Platform: Large-scale GCP data platform
• Time: Starts part-time and scales to full-time
• Travel: Occasional visits to the client’s UK office

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, working as an independent architecture voice alongside senior client architects.

Responsibilities

• Design and own the target-state lakehouse/medallion architecture for a multi-petabyte GCP data platform supporting thousands of pipelines and hundreds of thousands of tables
• Translate transformation goals into scalable, secure architecture decisions and delivery roadmaps
• Define architecture for ingestion, transformation, curation, dataset registration/cataloging, governance, and analytics-serving (BigQuery serving layer, dbt/Looker for transformation and reporting)
• Advise on migration strategy for legacy ETL pipelines (including undocumented, proprietary legacy tooling) into modern GCP-native or open lakehouse patterns
• Evaluate and help select ingestion/transformation tooling (Fivetran, dbt, Airflow/Composer, NiFi) through ongoing proof of concepts
• Define data governance and cataloging strategy aligned with GCP native catalog capabilities (Dataplex, BigQuery universal catalog), including metadata, lineage, and access-control design
• Act as senior technical reviewer to ensure architectural consistency, security compliance, and long-term maintainability
• Present and validate architecture decisions to client executives, enterprise architecture teams, and security stakeholders
• Operate within the client’s 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 (e.g., bronze/silver/gold)
• 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/transformation tooling such as Fivetran, dbt, Apache Airflow/Composer
• Experience working directly with enterprise clients as a trusted technical advisor
• Comfort working in a security-conscious enterprise with client-controlled toolchains, including use of client-approved AI-assisted development tools
• Excellent communication and presentation skills for technical, business, and executive audiences
• Fluent English and comfortable in a client-facing role daily
• Willingness to travel occasionally (a few days at a time) to the client’s UK office

Benefits

• Growth support: 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 with global teams and leading brands
• Collaborative culture with zero micromanagement
• Well-being programs and people-focused support tailored to your location