Platform Architect
12 hours ago
Manchester
Role: Senior Data Platform Architect (Contract) Duration: 6 months+ IR35: Inside Start: January Location: Remote (occasional on-site as required) Overview A large organisation is maturing its modern cloud-based data platform built on Snowflake and Azure. They have strong leadership, product ownership, and capable data engineering teams but require a hands-on senior specialist to define and implement key elements of the target platform architecture. This role is execution-focused - ideal for a senior individual contributor with deep technical expertise who can accelerate delivery, improve platform engineering standards, and guide teams from within. Key Responsibilities • Define, refine, and implement the target technical architecture across Snowflake, Azure, and associated integration layers., • Lead hands-on engineering across IaC, CI/CD, platform automation, access control, and metadata/lineage implementation., • Integrate the data platform with broader application and cloud services, ensuring secure, scalable, and reliable data movement., • Improve platform performance, cost efficiency, monitoring, and operational resilience., • Translate requirements from product owners and technical stakeholders into scalable solution designs., • Support the onboarding of additional data domains, workloads, and analytical use cases., • Troubleshoot platform-wide issues and design durable, long-term fixes., • Provide technical oversight, engineering guidance, and best-practice coaching without acting as a manager or strategist. Required Experience • Proven experience building, scaling, and operating modern cloud-based data platforms using Snowflake and Azure., • Strong hands-on skills in:, • Terraform (Azure + Snowflake IaC), • CI/CD (Azure DevOps / GitHub Actions), • Azure Data Services (ADF, Functions, Key Vault, Event Hub, etc.), • ELT patterns and data pipeline orchestration, • Strong understanding of platform security, RBAC/ABAC, governance-enabling patterns, and data quality foundations., • Broad experience across integration, platform automation, pipelines, metadata, observability, and cost management., • Ability to work independently in complex environments with both legacy and modern components., • Clear communicator who can articulate architectural decisions to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.