Principal Enterprise Architect (Data)
Role details
Job location
Tech stack
Job description
The Principal Enterprise Architect (Data) is a senior technical leadership role responsible for defining, governing and evolving the organisations enterprise data architecture. The post holder will ensure that data architecture supports Companies Houses strategic priorities, enables secure and trusted use of data, and strengthens interoperability across legacy, modern and third-party systems.
You will join a small, high-performing and collaborative team that values open thinking, professional challenge and continuous improvement. Working closely with colleagues across the Digital and Data directorates, as well as senior business stakeholders, you will help design and assure robust, secure and resilient data solutions that support organisational priorities and long-term transformation.
- You will act as the authoritative voice on enterprise data architecture, providing clear direction, assurance and guidance across programmes and projects. You will treat data as a managed enterprise asset with clear ownership, robust lifecycle controls and measurable business value.
- This is a highly collaborative role, working with senior stakeholders, architects, delivery teams and governance forums to reduce risk, improve data quality and enable scalable, reusable data solutions., Strategy and architecture
- Lead the development and maintenance of the enterprise data architecture and roadmap, aligned to organisational strategy and change portfolios.
- Define and maintain enterprise-level data models (conceptual and logical, and where appropriate physical).
- Establish canonical data definitions, domain boundaries and integration patterns to support reuse and interoperability.
- Provide architectural assurance to ensure solutions align with agreed data architecture principles.
- Support the identification, valuation and prioritisation of critical data assets to maximise value and return on investment.
Standards, governance and assurance
- Create, publish and maintain enterprise data standards, patterns and guidelines.
- Chair or contribute to data governance forums and architecture review boards.
- Approve, manage or escalate deviations from agreed data standards.
- Ensure data governance policies (including classification, access and retention) are embedded in delivery.
- Identify data-related risks and compliance impacts and support appropriate mitigation.
Data quality and management
- Promote strong data quality, metadata and master data management practices.
- Define data quality indicators and frameworks for measurement and improvement.
- Drive adoption of data ownership and stewardship across the organisation.
- Ensure effective data lifecycle management from creation through to archival.
Operational and delivery support
- Support programmes and projects to translate business needs into robust and compliant data designs.
- Provide specialist data architecture advice to solution architects and development teams.
- Assist with complex data migrations, legacy transformations and API-based integration approaches.
- Support data platform and tooling decisions, ensuring alignment with enterprise standards.
Security, compliance and collaboration
- Ensure data architecture supports the secure handling of personal, sensitive and restricted data.
- Align data designs with legal, regulatory and policy requirements, including data protection legislation.
- Work closely with security architecture colleagues to ensure secure data flows and access controls.
- Advocate data-driven decision making and provide mentoring and guidance to colleagues across the organisation.
You can read more about a career in Digital and Data within the Civil Service in the Government Digital and Data Candidate Information Pack., * We are currently using a hybrid approach to the way we work which provides opportunities for you to be adaptable in the way you work so that you can achieve a healthy balance between your work and home life. The degree of choice you have will depend on your role and your day-to-day work activities.
- Your manager will agree regular patterns of attendance with you; however, you may be required to make yourself available to attend the office more frequently when required to meet business needs.
- You could be based at either our Cardiff or Edinburgh office, and a hybrid employment contract will be provided as the standard offering. However, remote contracts may be considered as an exception whereby commuting to the office location of your team is not reasonably practicable., Please note: In the case of a large number of applications, before conducting a full sift as described above, the panel may conduct a pre-sift assessing all applications against the following Experience:
- Significant experience working as an enterprise or senior data architect within complex organisations.
Once the advert has closed, we will sift applications - this involves reading through them all, please bear with us as this can take some time.
We may raise the score required if we receive a high number of applications.
At sift we may choose to take through the highest performing candidates to the next stage. If, after the final stage is completed and roles are unfilled, we will proceed to invite lower scoring candidates to interview., In line with Government guidance, successfully appointed candidates will need to provide documents for our Right to Work checks.
From June 2026, applicants who are successful at interview will be, as part of pre-employment screening, subject to a check on the Internal Fraud Database (IFD). Your personal details (name, National Insurance number, and date of birth) will be checked against the Civil Service Resourcing Extract IFD.
This check will provide information about employees who have been dismissed for fraud or dishonesty offences. This check also applies to employees who resign or otherwise leave before being dismissed for fraud or dishonesty had their employment continued.
If your details appear on this database, you will not be offered employment unless you can demonstrate exceptional circumstances. Companies House, acting on behalf of the vacancy holder, will inform you if your application is refused for this reason.
Please note: You are not eligible to apply for a role within the Civil Service if the application is made within a 5 year period following a dismissal for carrying out internal fraud against government. Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
Security
Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check. Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is security check .
See our vetting charter . People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks., * UK nationals
- nationals of the Republic of Ireland
- nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
- nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
- individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
- Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service
Requirements
- Significant experience working as an enterprise or senior data architect within complex organisations.
- Strong experience in enterprise data modelling, data governance and data architecture design.
- Experience working within large-scale, hybrid environments, including legacy systems, cloud platforms and third-party services.
- Demonstrable experience designing and assuring data integration solutions, including APIs and distributed services.
- Knowledge of data quality, metadata management, master data management and data taxonomy approaches.
- Experience working with data standards and structured reporting formats (for example XBRL, iXBRL, JSON Schema or OpenAPI).
- Strong understanding of data security, privacy and risk, including secure handling of personal and sensitive data.
- Professional certifications or qualifications in architecture or data disciplines (for example TOGAF, DAMA, CDMP).
- Cloud platform data certifications (for example AWS, Azure or Google Cloud).
- Experience with modern data platforms, analytics ecosystems and data tooling.
Leadership and ways of working
- Proven ability to engage, influence and challenge a wide range of stakeholders, including at senior levels.
- Ability to balance immediate delivery needs with longer-term strategic architectural vision.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving capability, with the confidence to make and defend architectural decisions.
- Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical audiences.
- Experience working collaboratively across organisational and disciplinary boundaries., * Seeing the Big Picture
- Working Together
- Communicating and Influencing
- Changing and Improving
Technical skills, This vacancy is using Success Profiles , and will assess your Behaviours, Experience and Technical skills., * Significant experience working as an enterprise or senior data architect within complex organisations.
- Strong experience in enterprise data modelling, data governance and data architecture design.
- Experience working within large-scale, hybrid environments, including legacy systems, cloud platforms and third-party services.
- Proven ability to engage, influence and challenge a wide range of stakeholders, including at senior levels.
We'd encourage you to break down your statement into clearly defined paragraphs that address each point above, use the full word count, and give us clear examples and evidence of the essential criteria listed., * Significant experience working as an enterprise or senior data architect within complex organisations.
The presentation will be at the beginning of the interview, followed by Behaviour and Technical Skills questions. Full details of the presentation topic will be sent in the interview confirmation email.
The lead criteria to distinguish between tied candidates will be the presentation, which is assessing Experience: Significant experience working as an enterprise or senior data architect within complex organisations.
A reserve list may be held for up to 12 months from which further appointments may be made for the same or similar roles.
If after the interview you are not found appointable at the advertised grade, you may be offered the lower grade role if you are considered to meet the skills, experience and behaviours for the lower level. The benchmark for appointing to the lower grade is set at the start of each campaign.
Benefits & conditions
£58,531 - £83,136 Base salary is £58,531 - £65,136 with an additional non-pensionable digital allowance of between £11,350 - £18,000. The final salary and allowance awarded will be based on an assessment of your skills and experience as demonstrated at interview.
All our roles come with an excellent benefits package, including the generous Civil Service Pension Scheme. Further salary increases depend entirely upon the outcome of our annual pay negotiation with central government. If you are a current Civil Servant transferring to us, your salary will be discussed in line with our pay policies. A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97% GBP, * Flexible working with no core hours (6am 8pm flexible options)
- 30 days annual leave
- 8 bank holidays & 1 privilege day
- Enrolment into Civil Service Pension scheme average 28.97%
Find out more about what a great place Companies House is to work, Alongside your salary of £58,531, Companies House contributes £16,956 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
We believe that our success is driven by the well-being and satisfaction of our team members at all levels of the organisation. At Companies House were committed to providing a comprehensive benefits package that goes beyond the ordinary, ensuring your career journey with us is not only fulfilling, but also rewarding. We pride ourselves on offering a quality work-life balance with our employee wellbeing being central to our working practices.
