Senior Data Architect – Enterprise Data Strategy & Cloud Platforms

About the role

The Senior Data Architect will define and drive the organisation's data strategy, architecture and governance. You will design scalable, secure data platforms that enable analytics, AI/ML and business intelligence across the enterprise.

Key responsibilities

• Define enterprise data architecture (logical & physical models) and design data lakes, warehouses and lakehouses.
• Architect end‑to‑end data pipelines (batch & real‑time) and select appropriate cloud technologies (Azure, AWS, GCP, Databricks, Snowflake, Fabric).
• Establish data standards, governance policies, metadata management, lineage and master data management.
• Lead cloud data platform design, optimise storage, compute and cost (FinOps).
• Design data integration across ERP, CRM and telecom systems using API‑driven and event‑based approaches.
• Implement security, privacy and compliance controls (GDPR, POPIA, etc.).
• Collaborate with business, engineering and analytics teams and mentor data engineers and architects.

Required profile

• 10‑15+ years of experience in data engineering or data architecture.
• Proven track record delivering enterprise‑scale data platforms.
• Leadership experience managing technical teams and stakeholder relationships.
• Experience in telecom, BFSI or FinTech domains is a plus.

Required skills

• Data modeling (Kimball, Data Vault)
• ETL/ELT tools: Informatica, Talend, Azure Data Factory, SSIS
• Big Data technologies: Spark, Hadoop
• SQL & NoSQL databases
• Cloud platforms: Azure, AWS, GCP
• Tools: Databricks, Snowflake, Microsoft Fabric, Kafka
• Data lake, data warehouse and lakehouse architecture
• Real‑time streaming (Kafka, Event Hub)
• API and micro‑services integration
• Data governance, lineage and cataloging tools: Collibra, Alation, Purview