Head of Data - Outside IR35

We're supporting a leading UK Wealth Management organisation on a major AI transformation and are looking for an experienced Head of Data to lead the design and delivery of the data platforms that underpin production AI solutions.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role, combining enterprise data architecture with modern cloud engineering. You'll work closely with AI, Engineering and Transformation teams to build secure, governed and AI-ready data platforms within a highly regulated environment., * Define and deliver the enterprise data strategy supporting AI initiatives

• Design modern data architectures using Microsoft Fabric, OneLake, Azure AI Foundry and Dataverse
• Build and optimise scalable cloud-native data pipelines
• Implement data quality, governance and security frameworks
• Lead data migration and transformation activities
• Produce architecture documentation and data models
• Ensure compliance with FCA, UK GDPR and internal governance standards
• Partner with technical and business stakeholders to shape the future data platform

• Proven experience delivering enterprise cloud data platforms
• Strong Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Lake and Azure data services experience
• Expertise building scalable ETL/ ELT pipelines
• Strong SQL and Python (Pandas/ PySpark)
• Experience supporting AI, ML or intelligent automation workloads
• Strong understanding of data governance, quality and security
• Experience working within regulated environments
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills

Desirable

• Microsoft Dataverse & Dynamics 365
• Azure AI Foundry, Purview, Data Factory or Synapse
• Financial Services or Wealth Management experience
• CRM transformation programmes
• Experience with RAG, embeddings and AI data preparation