Data Architect – SC Cleared

£650 p/d Outside IR35
Remote, occasional London travel
October Start – 6 months, extension expected

We are recruiting a Data Architect to support a major data modernisation programme within a complex central government environment. The role will focus on data retention and deletion, helping establish the governance, architecture and controls required as the organisation transitions its data estate to a modern cloud-based platform. This position combines data architecture and management expertise with extensive stakeholder engagement across technical, operational, policy and compliance teams.

Role responsibilities

• Define and maintain data architecture principles, standards and guardrails covering data retention, deletion and lifecycle management.
• Support the development and implementation of global and local data-retention approaches across multiple products and data domains.
• Contribute to the alpha phase of a data estate modernisation programme, qualifying use cases, validating requirements and testing architectural assumptions.
• Work with architecture and engineering teams to embed retention and deletion controls across different layers of the target data platform.
• Advise product and delivery teams on non-compliant datasets, required remediation and appropriate data-management practices.
• Lead engagement with technical, compliance, policy and operational stakeholders to resolve dependencies and progress decisions.
• Produce and review architecture documentation, data models, requirements, options papers and materials for governance forums.
• Track risks, issues and decisions, ensuring data-management concerns are clearly reported and escalated where required.

Key experience and requirements

• Active SC clearance, with sufficient validity to support the initial contract term.
• Experience working as a Data Architect, Data Solutions Architect or Data Management Architect within a large or regulated organisation.
• Strong knowledge of data governance, retention, deletion, metadata, data lineage and lifecycle-management principles.
• Experience defining data architecture standards, controls and reusable patterns for cloud or enterprise data platforms.
• Ability to translate policy, compliance and business requirements into practical technical guardrails.
• Experience engaging stakeholders across architecture, engineering, product, compliance and policy functions.
• Knowledge of modern cloud data platforms and architectural approaches; Databricks and medallion architecture experience would be beneficial but is not essential.
• Familiarity with data modelling, data catalogues, master data management or governance tooling such as Informatica Axon and Enterprise Data Catalog would be advantageous.