Data Architect

The Department

Our Technology team continues to go from strength to strength, playing a vital role in firm‑wide innovation and strategy. Far from being a support function, Technology is integral to the firm's growth agenda, backed by strong leadership engagement and sustained investment.

As a Data Architect, you will play a critical role in designing, developing, and evolving the organisation's data landscape to enable trusted, accessible, and secure data capabilities across the business. Reporting to the Head of Data for day‑to‑day direction, and to the Head of Architecture for cross‑domain alignment and architectural governance, you will ensure that data capabilities are designed for quality, consistency, and operational sustainability.

You will contribute to the firm's Data mission of putting the power of data at the fingertips of our fee earners, enabling better decisions, improved client service, and operational efficiency.

• Define and maintain data architecture principles, standards, and patterns aligned with enterprise architecture governance.
• Ensure the Data Architecture roadmap is developed and maintained in alignment with both the Enterprise Architecture strategy and the firm's Data Strategy.
• Own the enterprise data model and ensure consistency across all product and platform implementations.
• Design target architecture for data platforms including Azure Data Lake, Synapse Analytics, and Power BI.
• Architect data pipelines, ETL/ELT processes, and real‑time streaming architectures.
• Define architecture patterns for Master Data Management (MDM) using Profisee, ensuring consistent client, matter, and entity data.
• Design data integration patterns across Azure Service Bus, APIs, and batch processes.
• Collaborate with Security Architect on data classification, protection controls, and privacy‑by‑design patterns.
• Define data governance frameworks including ownership, stewardship, and accountability structures.
• Establish data quality metrics, monitoring, and remediation processes.
• Ensure GDPR, SRA, and regulatory data compliance through appropriate architecture patterns.
• Architect data foundations for AI/ML initiatives including training data pipelines and feature engineering.
• Present at governance forums (TAB, CAB) to provide data architecture input and review data‑intensive designs.
• Act as a senior escalation point for data design decisions across major programmes and initiatives.
• Support adoption of federated architectural practices such as domain driven design, data contracts, and distributed data ownership.
• Collaborate closely with the Data Governance function to embed stewardship, ownership models, lineage and data quality expectations across all domains.
• Maintain and evolve the Data Architecture roadmap, ensuring alignment to both the Data Strategy and the wider Enterprise Architecture strategy and transformation plans.
• Coach Data Governance, Platform and Product teams on data architecture best practices and data modelling standards.
• Champion data architecture best practice across the Data Platform, Product, and Governance teams, supporting capability uplift and knowledge sharing.

• Proven in‑depth experience in data architecture, data engineering, or data platform roles.
• Exceptional knowledge of Azure data services (Data Lake, Synapse, Data Factory, Databricks).
• Strong experience with data modelling, dimensional modelling, and enterprise data models.
• Experience with Master Data Management platforms (Profisee, Informatica MDM, or similar).
• Experience working within federated or domain‑oriented architecture models.
• Understanding of data contracts and modern data product‑centric design approaches.
• Excellent knowledge of SQL Server, Azure SQL, and data warehouse architectures.
• Experience with BI and analytics platforms (Power BI, Tableau, or similar).
• Understanding data governance frameworks and data quality management.
• Knowledge of data integration patterns including APIs, messaging (Service Bus), and ETL/ELT.
• Experience streaming/real‑time data architectures (Event Hubs, Kafka).
• Understanding GDPR, data privacy regulations, and data protection requirements.
• Experience working…