Data Architect

We re seeking an experienced Data Architect to lead the design and evolution of enterprise-scale data architectures supporting digital services, analytics and operational decision-making.

This is a lead-level position combining hands-on architecture with technical leadership, assurance and stakeholder engagement. You ll shape strategic data decisions across multiple delivery teams ensuring solutions are secure, sustainable, user-focused and aligned with government standards.

This role is ideal for someone operating at SFIA Level 5 (Lead) providing authoritative guidance, influencing architectural direction, and ensuring long-term value without being tied to a single cloud provider or vendor ecosystem.

The Role

You will:

• Define and own end-to-end data architecture designs across digital services and analytics platforms
• Establish architecture principles, standards and reusable patterns across teams
• Ensure architectures address the full data lifecycle (acquisition through to decommissioning)
• Provide technical leadership and architectural assurance across delivery teams
• Align data decisions with user needs, business outcomes, risk appetite and security requirements
• Influence and support data governance including metadata, lineage, ownership and data quality
• Engage senior stakeholders to explain trade-offs and support informed decision-making

You ll bring extensive commercial experience across several of the following:

• Designing end-to-end data architectures (ingestion, processing, storage, analytics, access layers)
• Strong data modelling expertise (conceptual, logical, physical, operational and analytical models)
• Architecting modern analytics platforms (data warehouses, lakehouse architectures, domain-oriented data platforms)
• Data integration patterns (batch, event-driven, API-led approaches)
• Applying security-by-design and privacy-by-design principles
• Working across cloud environments in a vendor-neutral capacity
• Familiarity with modern data engineering tooling and open-source ecosystems

What We re Looking For

• Operates confidently at Lead level (SFIA 5)
• Provides authoritative architectural guidance across teams
• Strong communicator able to engage both technical teams and senior leadership
• Balances strategic direction with delivery pragmatism
• Comfortable influencing across multiple teams and suppliers
• Experienced within UK Government Digital, Data & Technology environments
• Outcome-focused, avoiding vendor-led or technology-first thinking

Security Clearance

Due to the nature of the work, candidates must:

• Be eligible for SC Clearance
• Have lived continuously in the UK for the past 5+ years
• Have the right to work in the UK without sponsorship

Employer pension starting at 5%, increasing with tenure Group life assurance

Genuine hybrid working + home setup allowance

25 days annual leave + bank holidays (with buy/sell option)

Fully funded professional certifications (AWS, GCP, Agile etc.)

5 days paid study leave + £500 annual personal development fund

1-2-1 coaching and structured career development

Private medical insurance

Cycle to Work scheme

2 paid volunteering days per year

Meraki are working on behalf of a leading digital consultancy delivering complex, secure data platforms across the UK public sector.