Lead Data Architect

Sword is a leading provider of business technology solutions within the Energy, Public and Finance Sectors, driving transformational change within our clients.  We use proven technology, specialist teams and domain expertise to build solid technical foundations across platforms, data, and business applications.  We have a passion for using technology to solve business problems, working in partnership with our clients to help in achieving their goals. 

About the role:

This is an exciting opportunity for a senior data professional to take a pivotal leadership role within our growing Data & AI business unit.

As the Lead Data Architect, you will report directly to the Technical Director and play a major role in shaping our engineering capability, standards, and technical strategy. You will lead a team of Senior Data Engineers, provide hands‑on coaching, and deliver technical assurance across multiple client engagements to ensure high-quality, secure, and scalable data solutions. You will also be instrumental in helping to build and secure future work for our teams; preparing statements of work and engaging with clients alongside our sales team.

The role offers the chance to work with the very latest Microsoft technologies, such as Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Purview, and Microsoft Foundry, while influencing solution design, architectural decisions, and delivery excellence. You will work closely with clients across a range of industries, supporting discovery, design, and delivery, and you will also contribute to pre‑sales activity by joining client calls, shaping proposals, and advising on solution approaches.

This role provides the perfect blend of leadership, technical depth, innovation, and client interaction, offering substantial scope to make a lasting impact on both our clients and the direction of our Data Engineering service offerings.



Areas of Accountability, Responsibility and Competence Level:



• Lead, mentor, and develop Senior Data Engineers, promoting best practices and high-quality engineering delivery

• Provide technical direction, guidance, and oversight across all data engineering projects
• Deliver technical assurance by reviewing solution designs, pipelines, architectures, and implementation approaches
• Oversee the design and delivery of scalable, cloud-native data solutions using Azure technologies
• Ensure engineering teams follow best-practice patterns for ETL/ELT, data modelling, data lakes, governance, and optimisation
• Support the Data & AI Technical Director in shaping the engineering strategy, standards, and capability roadmap
• Act as a senior technical advisor to clients, translating business requirements into modern data engineering solutions
• Facilitate discovery sessions, workshops, and technical design reviews with client stakeholders
• Support the sales team by joining client calls, providing technical expertise, and contributing to solution shaping
• Participate in scoping, estimation, and the creation of technical content for proposals and bids
• Ensure all solutions meet governance, security, compliance, and data quality standards
• Promote strong engineering fundamentals including code quality, testing, automation, documentation, and CI/CD
• Identify delivery risks, propose mitigation strategies, and ensure predictable, high-quality project outcomes
• Collaborate with Data Architects, AI Specialists, and other cross-functional teams to design cohesive end-to-end solutions
• Keep the engineering team aligned with emerging technologies, tools, and cloud capabilities
• Identify opportunities to improve efficiency through automation, accelerators, and reusable components
• Contribute hands-on technical expertise when required to unblock teams or solve complex engineering challenges
• Engage in continuous improvement initiatives to advance engineering maturity and standardisation across the practice

Requirements

• Strong people skills; able to engage clients around understanding their problems and solution-forming, as well being able to inspire and motivate your teams
• Experience in working with stakeholders to propose appropriate solutions across a broad range of technical challenges
• Deep expertise in Azure Data Platform components, including Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure SQL, Azure Synapse, Azure Data Factory, and Azure Databricks
• Strong hands‑on experience building end-to-end data pipelines using Azure-native ELT/ETL frameworks and modern orchestration patterns
• Advanced knowledge of Microsoft Fabric, including lakehouses, warehouses, pipelines, notebooks, dataflows, and monitoring
• Ability to architect and oversee Fabric-powered data estate modernisation for analytics, BI, and AI scenarios
• Strong understanding of OneLake as a unified storage layer and how to optimise performance, cost, and governance within Fabric
• Significant experience with Power BI, including data modelling, DAX, dataset management, semantic models, and enterprise BI design
• Understanding of how Power BI integrates with Fabric, including DirectLake, security, and data lineage
• Strong capability in Microsoft Purview, including data governance, data cataloguing, classification, lineage, policy setup, and access controls
• Ability to embed governance frameworks across engineering teams using Purview workflows and automation
• Experience designing secure and compliant data solutions aligned to enterprise standards and regulatory requirements
• Strong foundation in data modelling, including dimensional modelling, lakehouse design, and semantic layer optimisation
• Expertise in CI/CD for data engineering, including Git integration, code reviews, deployment pipelines, and DevOps practices
• Ability to lead technical assurance across cloud architectures, pipelines, storage layers, and data models
• Hands‑on expertise implementing API integrations, ingestion patterns, and real-time / streaming data solutions
• Familiarity with Microsoft Foundry concepts, including AI application development, model lifecycle workflows, and integration with enterprise data platforms
• Understanding of how Foundry solutions can extend the data engineering ecosystem through AI-driven automation, copilots, and custom workflows
• Strong capability in data quality frameworks, observability, monitoring, and operational support of production pipelines
• Experience with performance tuning across compute, storage, pipelines, and BI models to optimise cost and efficiency
• Ability to evaluate new technologies, patterns, and tools across Azure, Fabric, Power BI, Purview, and Foundry to guide technical strategy

Benefits

At Sword, our core values and culture are based on caring about our people, investing in training and career development, and building inclusive teams where we are all encouraged to contribute to achieve success. We offer comprehensive benefits designed to support your professional development and enhance your overall quality of life. In addition to a Competitive Salary, here's what you can expect as part of our benefits package:

• Personalised Career Development: We create a development plan customised to your goals and aspirations, with a range of learning and development opportunities within a culture that encourages growth.
• Flexible working: Flexible work arrangements to support your work-life balance. We can’t promise to always be able to meet every request, however, are keen to discuss your individual preferences to make it work where we can.
• A Fantastic Benefits Package: This includes generous annual leave allowance, enhanced family friendly benefits, pension scheme, access to private health, well-being, and insurance schemes.

At Sword we are dedicated to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace and are proud to be an equal opportunities employer, ensuring that all applicants receive fair and equal consideration for employment, regardless of whether they meet every requirement. If you don’t tick all the boxes but feel you have some of the relevant skills and experience we’re looking for, please do consider applying and highlight your transferable skills and experience. We embrace diversity in all its forms, valuing individuals regardless of age, disability, gender identity or reassignment, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity status, race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation. Your perspective and potential are important to us.