Job Overview
Senior Lead Consultant / Principal Data Advisor — strategic technical and advisory role responsible for leading large-scale data programmes and providing expert guidance on data governance, architecture and transformation. The person in this role will engage with senior leadership and steering committees to drive architectural decisions, mediate cross-functional trade-offs and assess technical recommendations, particularly in cloud-based analytics environments.
Responsibilities
- Lead and manage large, multi-stream data programmes from conception through delivery, ensuring alignment with business objectives and governance requirements.
- Advise executive stakeholders and steering committees on data strategy, architecture and risk, providing clear rationale for proposed approaches.
- Define and enforce data governance frameworks, roles and processes to support reliable data management across the organisation.
- Design and validate data architectures, including data warehouses, data platforms and lakehouse solutions, balancing technical, security and operational considerations.
- Make and defend architectural and organisational decisions, documenting trade-offs and implementation implications.
- Facilitate consensus among business units, IT, security and data owners, moderating complex negotiations to reach practical, scalable outcomes.
- Assess cloud analytics platforms and services, translating technical options into actionable recommendations for stakeholders.
- Mentor and provide technical leadership to cross-functional teams, promoting best practices in data engineering and architecture.
Qualifications
- Extensive proven experience leading large-scale data programmes and initiatives.
- Demonstrated experience working with senior management and steering committees on strategic data matters.
- Practical expertise in data governance, data architecture and data transformation patterns.
- Track record of making architectural and organisational decisions in complex environments, supported by clear documentation of trade-offs.
- Ability to facilitate and moderate difficult agreements between business, IT, security and data owners.
- Experience building data warehouses, data platforms or lakehouse-style solutions.
- Working knowledge of Google Cloud Platform and BigQuery sufficient to evaluate architectural and technical recommendations.
- Relevant professional experience; formal qualifications in computer science, data engineering, information systems or a related discipline are advantageous but not mandatory.
Benefits
- 100% remote opportunity.
- Opportunity to lead strategic, high-impact data programmes with direct exposure to senior stakeholders.
- Collaborative professional environment with access to cross-disciplinary teams and experts.
- Scope to shape data architecture and governance practices across the organisation.