Lead Data & Information Architect

Key accountabilities and responsibilities

• Develop architectural patterns and standards for data based on ingestion routines, data governance and presentation requirements.
• Develop conceptual, logical and physical data models to support data driven decision making across the organisation.
• Be a data custodian, maintaining and publishing a comprehensive data catalogue, working with data owners and stewards to ensure data is defined and controlled in accordance with agreed standards.
• Work with stakeholders to understand business activities and ensure the availability of high quality information to support timely decision making.
• Work closely with the architecture community to define approaches to effectively meet user needs.
• Be the technical point of contact for data stewardship and data governance issues, ensuring that our data governance structure is adhered to.
• Work closely with stakeholders to define and improve information requirements.
• Actively participate in a data practitioner community of interest, sharing knowledge and industry best practice with others.
• Actively contribute to the work across the Data & Digital teams to develop common data services to drive data led decision making across the organization.
• Networking and Influencing - proactively develop relationships with key colleagues within business units across the Agency to ensure that the needs of the directorate are communicated and understood.
• Focus on results Looks critically at systems, policies, processes and procedures. Is able to contextualise KOPs and use to drive successful outcomes and improvements. Enables effective teamwork by encouraging the team to achieve more through combined efforts than by the sum of all their individual parts.
• Leadership - be visible across the business and the Agency as a leader in the field; engaging with colleagues of all levels to provide guidance and inspire best practice.
• Mutually beneficial relationships established and maintained with colleagues across the business.
• Creative - suggest and implement improvements, strategies and systems - based on experience and knowledge of the business - to improve activities, processes and attitudes towards data.
• Collaborative - work with a wide variety of colleagues from within and outside of the business; listening to view points and appreciating the perspective of others whilst delivering own role.
• Ambitious - strive to deliver efficient and effective data solutions for the business and the Agency.

Key skills, knowledge and experience

• Strong experience of developing and managing a data catalogue for a diverse and complex organisation
• Ability to communicate complex technical and data issues with clarity
• Experience of building a network of strong interpersonal relationships to achieve shared objectives
• Ability to listen to the needs of stakeholders (both technical and business) and interpret between them
• Able to demonstrate a deep understanding of the technical and data concepts required in the role and how they fit into the wider technical landscape.
• Ability to work with and challenge senior stakeholders, can prioritise and mitigate constraints, adapting your approach accordingly
• Demonstrable experience in a role that includes problem solving, analytical and logical skills.
• Experience of working in an Agile environment
• Demonstrated ability to develop robust Enterprise solutions within timelines
• Data governance and master data management
• Information and Data architecture, frameworks, technologies, tools and best practice.
• Data Engineering concepts, including conceptual, Logical and Physical data designs, relational databases and data warehousing and cloud-based data deployment
• Designing and building data infrastructure/automated reporting tools
• Comfortable giving definition to ambiguous problems, can do this independently with limited guidance
• Verbal/written communication & data presentation skills, including experience of effectively communicating with both business and technical teams
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to collect, organise, analyse, and disseminate significant amounts of information with attention to detail and accuracy
• Time taken to generate actionable intelligence from raw data
• High quality data assets delivered across the agency which contribute to improved data understanding, quality and use in decision making
• Experience working with unstructured or semi-structured data environments
• Experience in data engineering using Python or R
• Experience working with cloud technologies, in particular Microsoft Azure
• Solid understanding of software design principles and agile best practices.
• Familiar with Enterprise Metadata Management and industry standards, and creating and deploying best practices and methodologies