Data Architecture Consultant

Role Purpose

The Data Architecture Consultant develops client data-architecture recommendations, models, standards and transition designs that connect business needs with secure and implementable technology. The role documents how data is created, organised, integrated, stored, shared and used, and helps clients move from current-state fragmentation to a coherent target architecture. The consultant works with business experts, governance teams, security specialists, engineers and platform owners to ensure that architecture decisions reflect definitions, quality, ownership, interoperability, privacy, resilience and operational constraints.

The role prepares design options and recommendations for client approval and supports implementation teams with traceable specifications. It does not exercise the client's formal architecture authority. Strong candidates combine modelling depth with the ability to explain trade-offs, dependencies and transition steps to non-technical stakeholders.

• Assess current data sources, stores, flows, interfaces, platforms, models, standards and architecture constraints.
• Develop architecture principles and current-state, target-state and transition-state views.
• Create or review conceptual, logical and physical data models aligned with business definitions and metadata.
• Define data domains, subject areas, relationships, ownership boundaries and authoritative sources.
• Develop integration, interoperability, API, exchange and pipeline design recommendations.
• Incorporate data quality, master-data, metadata, lineage, security, privacy, retention and resilience requirements into designs.
• Document architecture decisions, options, trade-offs, assumptions, risks and dependencies.
• Facilitate architecture and modelling workshops with business and technical stakeholders.
• Review solution and vendor designs against approved principles, requirements and target architecture.
• Support technical specifications, implementation sequencing and transition-roadmap development.
• Validate delivered designs and implementation evidence and identify deviations requiring client decision.
  
  Provide model walkthroughs, documentation and knowledge transfer to client architecture and delivery teams.

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, data engineering, information systems or a related field.
• An equivalent combination of relevant education and directly applicable consulting or implementation experience may be considered.

• Typically 6-10 years in data architecture, data modeling, solution architecture or data engineering.
• Experience in enterprise architecture, data architecture, information architecture or data modelling.
• Experience developing current-state and target-state designs and supporting implementation roadmaps.
• Experience working with integration, data platforms, metadata, quality and security requirements.
• Experience presenting architecture options to business and technology stakeholders.

• Data-architecture principles, viewpoints and governance.
• Conceptual, logical and physical data modelling.
• Data domains, authoritative sources and ownership boundaries.
• Integration, APIs, data exchange, pipelines and interoperability.
• Metadata, lineage, cataloguing and model traceability.
• Data quality and master/reference-data architecture.
• Security, privacy, classification, retention and resilience by design.
• Cloud, on-premises and hybrid platform patterns.

• Data modeling.
• Architecture methods.
• Integration and APIs.
• Database and platform design.
• Security-by-design.
• Stakeholder communication.
• Conceptual thinking.
• Modelling precision.
• Systems analysis.
• Design communication.
• Running architecture discovery and modelling workshops.
• Translating business requirements into traceable technical designs.
• Explaining technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders.
• Producing clear diagrams, specifications and decision records.
• Reviewing solution evidence and challenging unsupported design assumptions.
• Working effectively with vendors and multidisciplinary teams.
• Supporting formal client architecture decisions without assuming approval authority.

• TOGAF Enterprise Architecture Practitioner
• CDMP Practitioner with Data Modeling and Design specialty

• Data modeling
  
  Architecture methods
  
  Integration and APIs