Senior Data Architect

Senior Data Architect

Location: UK\-based – Hybrid working with occasional travel to Shivom offices and client locations
Employment Type: Permanent, Full\-Time
Salary: £80,000–£90,000 per annum, depending on experience
Industry: IT \& Telecommunications
Security Clearance: Current SC clearance or eligibility to obtain SC clearance

About the Role

Shivom Consultancy Ltd is looking for experienced Senior Data Architects to join our growing Architecture Practice.

You will provide architecture leadership across complex data estates spanning modern digital platforms, cloud services, operational databases, reporting services and long\-lived legacy systems.

The role focuses on how organisations structure, own, integrate, migrate, govern and use data across multiple applications, products and business services. You will help define clear data architecture direction, improve data quality and consistency, establish appropriate ownership and boundaries, support legacy modernisation and enable secure and reliable information sharing.

We are recruiting multiple Senior Data Architects and welcome candidates with complementary strengths across areas including:

• Enterprise and domain data architecture


• Operational and transactional data


• Conceptual, logical and physical data modelling


• PostgreSQL, Azure SQL and Microsoft SQL Server


• Oracle and legacy data platforms


• Data migration and modernisation


• Data integration and information exchange


• Reporting and information services


• Data governance, quality, metadata and lineage


• Cloud data architecture

Candidates are not expected to be specialists in every area.

You will work closely with Enterprise Architects, Solution Architects, Data Engineers, Integration Architects, application teams, cloud specialists, cyber security teams, product teams and technology suppliers, supporting major UK public sector and enterprise transformation programmes.

Key Responsibilities

As a Senior Data Architect, you will:

• Lead data architecture across complex digital platforms, products and business services.


• Define current, target and transition data architectures.


• Develop enterprise, domain and solution\-level data architecture.


• Create conceptual, logical and physical data models.


• Establish clear data ownership, stewardship and system\-of\-record principles.


• Define appropriate boundaries between application, shared, operational and analytical data.


• Design data architectures that support multiple products and services while avoiding unnecessary coupling.


• Define data flows across applications, APIs, messaging platforms, databases and information services.


• Develop data architecture roadmaps covering modernisation, migration, consolidation and technical debt.


• Assess existing databases and data services to identify opportunities for simplification and rationalisation.


• Define migration strategies from legacy databases and applications to modern platforms.


• Architect data coexistence during phased transformation and migration.


• Define reconciliation, validation and migration assurance approaches.


• Protect data integrity throughout migration and service transition.


• Define appropriate data retention, archival and disposal approaches.


• Support modernisation of long\-lived relational database estates.


• Define architecture for operational data, reporting, management information and downstream analytics.


• Improve data quality, consistency and accessibility across organisational and product boundaries.


• Define approaches for master, reference and shared data.


• Establish metadata, lineage and traceability requirements.


• Support secure information exchange between internal systems and external organisations.


• Define data security, privacy, access control and audit requirements.


• Define resilience, availability, recovery, scalability and performance requirements for data services.


• Work with Integration Architects on API, messaging, event\-driven and batch integration patterns.


• Work with Application Architects to align data ownership and persistence decisions with application boundaries.


• Translate data architecture into practical, implementable designs with engineering teams.


• Review data models, schemas, migration approaches and technology choices.


• Identify architectural risks, dependencies and technical debt.


• Present architecture decisions through technical governance and design authority forums.


• Support proofs of concept, technology evaluations and migration feasibility exercises.


• Promote automation, repeatable engineering and auditable change across data platforms.


• Contribute to architecture peer reviews and continuous improvement.

Essential Experience \& Skills

We are looking for strong experience across most of the following:

• Significant experience as a Data Architect, Senior Data Architect, Solution Architect with a strong data specialism, or equivalent senior architecture role.


• Experience working across complex enterprise data estates.


• Strong conceptual, logical and physical data modelling skills.


• Experience defining target and transition data architectures.


• Strong relational database architecture experience.


• Experience with PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Azure SQL, Oracle or comparable enterprise databases.


• Strong understanding of operational and transactional data architecture.


• Experience defining data ownership, domain boundaries and systems of record.


• Experience designing data architecture across multiple applications or product teams.


• Experience supporting reporting, management information and analytical services.


• Strong understanding of REST APIs, messaging, event\-driven and batch integration patterns.


• Experience architecting migrations between legacy and modern platforms.


• Experience planning coexistence between old and new data services during phased migrations.


• Understanding of migration reconciliation, validation, cutover and assurance.


• Strong understanding of data quality management.


• Understanding of metadata, lineage, traceability and data governance.


• Experience defining data retention, archiving and disposal requirements.


• Strong understanding of information security, privacy and data protection.


• Experience defining data access and authorisation approaches.


• Experience designing resilient and highly available data services.


• Understanding of database performance, scalability, backup and operational support.


• Experience producing architecture artefacts such as data models, data\-flow diagrams, roadmaps, options assessments and architecture decisions.


• Experience working within technical governance and architecture assurance processes.


• Experience working across multiple engineering teams and suppliers.


• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills.


• Ability to explain complex data architecture to both technical and non\-technical stakeholders.


• Ability to make pragmatic architecture decisions balancing strategic direction, data integrity, operational constraints and delivery requirements.

Data Modelling \& Governance

Strong data modelling capability is important for this role. You should be comfortable with:

• Conceptual, logical and physical data models


• Domain and entity\-relationship modelling


• Relational modelling


• Normalisation and denormalisation


• Schema design


• Data dictionaries


• Reference and master data


• Data classification


• Data contracts


• Business definitions


• Data ownership and stewardship


• Systems of record


• Metadata management


• Data catalogues


• Data lineage and traceability


• Data standards


• Privacy by design

You should use modelling to clarify business meaning, ownership, relationships and architectural boundaries rather than producing models purely as documentation.

Data Migration \& Legacy Modernisation

Experience or understanding of the following is important:

• Legacy database assessment and data profiling


• Migration strategy and source\-to\-target mapping


• Data transformation and cleansing


• Data quality remediation


• Incremental, bulk and delta migrations


• Data synchronisation and dual running


• Reconciliation and validation


• Cutover and rollback planning


• Data archiving and retention


• Legacy platform decommissioning


• Protecting data integrity and business continuity throughout migration

Technology Experience

Candidates do not need deep expertise in every technology listed below. Relevant experience may include:

Databases \& Data Platforms

• PostgreSQL


• Azure Database for PostgreSQL


• Azure SQL


• Microsoft SQL Server


• Oracle Database


• Redis


• Managed cloud databases


• Legacy relational database platforms

Microsoft Azure

• Microsoft Azure


• Azure Storage


• Azure Functions


• Azure Service Bus


• Azure API Management


• Microsoft Entra ID


• Managed Identities


• Azure Key Vault


• Azure Monitor


• Log Analytics


• Application Insights

Data \& Information Services

• Operational data stores


• Reporting databases


• Data integration services


• Reference and master data


• Data catalogues


• Metadata and lineage tooling


• Data quality tooling


• Power BI or comparable reporting technologies


• Power Platform and Dataverse

Engineering \& Automation

• Azure DevOps


• GitHub


• Source control and CI/CD


• Database change management


• Schema versioning


• Automated database deployment


• Infrastructure as Code


• Terraform or Bicep


• Automated testing and data validation


• Migration automation

Monitoring

• Azure Monitor


• Application Insights


• Log Analytics


• Dynatrace


• Grafana


• Database and query performance monitoring


• Capacity, replication and backup monitoring


• Operational dashboards and alerting

Experience with other cloud or enterprise data technologies is also relevant where the underlying architecture skills are transferable.

Security \& Data Protection

You should understand how to incorporate security and privacy into data architecture, including:

• Data c

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