City of London
Principal Data Architect (MDM) - Inside IR35 Contract Hybrid/Remote Working Day Rate up to £500 p/d with some flexibility We are seeking an experienced Data Architect to lead the design, implementation, and governance of enterprise data solutions. This role will emphasize operational data use cases — designing data flows that support day-to-day business operations, core applications, and real-time services — while also ensuring robust analytical and reporting capabilities. The ideal candidate will have to be a senior data leader with proven experience in engaging senior data / business / IT stakeholders, strong background in enterprise architecture, data strategy, and cloud technologies, with the ability to align both operational and analytical data initiatives with business objectives. Key responsibilities • Define and implement enterprise data architecture, ensuring alignment with both operational and analytical business needs., • Lead domain-driven data modeling efforts across conceptual, logical, and physical layers to ensure data designs reflect business domains and processes., • Define and oversee Master Data Management (MDM) strategies, including tool selection, vendor evaluation, implementation, and adoption across the enterprise., • Establish and maintain reference data management frameworks and governance processes., • Develop and execute data strategies, including future state architecture, data governance, metadata management, data privacy, reference data management, and data integration., • Lead the design and review of data architectures for both operational platforms (APIs, event streams, transactional systems) and analytical platforms (data lakes, warehouses, reporting)., • Establish and enforce data architecture standards, principles, and best practices across operational and analytical domains., • Drive adoption of governance frameworks, data quality practices, and remediation of technical debt., • Collaborate with application, integration, and analytics teams to deliver end-to-end data solutions., • Evaluate and select tools for operational integration (streaming, APIs, MDM) and analytical processing (warehouses, BI platforms)., • Design and maintain conceptual, logical, and domain models spanning both transactional and analytical data. Skills • Solid xperience in enterprise data architecture, data strategy, and cloud architecture and roadmap development of data transformation programme., • Expertise in operational data use cases: real-time data processing, APIs, messaging/streaming (Kafka, Pub/Sub, MQ), MDM, and transactional data flows., • Strong background in data modeling (conceptual, logical, physical) with a focus on domain-driven design (DDD)., • Proven ability to select, implement, and scale Master Data Management (MDM) solutions, including strategy definition, vendor assessment, and governance adoption., • Experience establishing reference data management and data quality practices at enterprise scale., • Knowledge of analytical data architectures: data lakes, warehouses (e.g., Snowflake, BigQuery), BI/reporting, and ETL pipelines., • Proficiency in public cloud platforms (AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure)., • Experience with both transactional RDBMS and modern distributed/cloud-native databases., • Familiarity with reporting and analytics tools (e.g., Tableau, Data Studio, Business Objects, Cognos, R)., • Skilled in architecture methodologies such as TOGAF Qualifications • Bachelor’s degree in engineering, Computer Science, or related field (Master’s preferred)., • Professional certifications such as CDMP (DAMA), Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect, Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert, or equivalent Experience • Previous roles in large-scale enterprise environments., • Experience in designing and implementing data solutions for operational resilience., • Track record of delivering enterprise data capability models, domain-driven architectures, and MDM strategies.