Senior Data Architect

Location:

Bristol or Manchester hybrid (2 days per week) (regular travel to partner sites across the UK and Ireland as needed)
Role Type:
Permanent (full-time preferred, flexible working considered)

PACT Solutions is a specialist management and digital transformation consultancy working exclusively with higher education institutions across the UK.

We help universities solve complex challenges across strategy, student records, data,changeand delivery. Our work often sits at the heart of major institutional transformation, helping partners improve the student journey, modernise operations and deliver change more effectively.

PACT has grown quickly and is now entering its next phase. We are moving from a founder-led boutique consultancy into a more scaled and structured business, while protecting the quality, culture and partner focus that have made us successful.

Our culture is crucial to our success. Each day,our teamsignificantlycontributes toour business and that of our partners.

We combine the agility and collaborative spirit of a close-knit consultancy with the credibility, structure, and professionalism needed to deliver meaningful digital transformation.

Our values sit at the heart of everything we do and are core to our business.

Partnership:

We work with you, not for you.

Integrity:

We do the right thing, even when it requires difficult conversations.

Curiosity:

We dig deeper to uncover what will truly deliver value.

Transformation:

We focus on outcomes that create lasting, measurable improvement.

We are looking for a Senior Data Architect to shape the data architecture, platform and governance foundations that enable our higher education partners to make better use of their data. You will work across complex transformation programmes, helping institutions move from fragmented data estates to coherent, secure and scalable data capabilities.

This is a senior architecture role combining strategic thinking with practical technical depth. You will define target-state data architectures and roadmaps, guide the design of modern cloud data platforms, and provide architectural assurance across data migration, integration, governance and analytics initiatives.

You will bring expertise in Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Fabric, alongside a strong understanding of data modelling, data governance and enterprise data management. You will work closely with partner stakeholders, delivery teams and PACT colleagues to turn complex needs into clear, pragmatic architecture decisions.

To establish and assure data architectures that provide trusted, well-governed and accessible data, enabling higher education institutions to improve operations, decision-making, analytics and future AI adoption.

• Lead assessments of current data landscapes, identifying architectural gaps, data risks, integration issues and opportunities for improvement.

• Define target-state enterprise data architectures, data strategies, roadmaps and principles that align with partner objectives and transformation plans.

• Develop conceptual, logical and physical data models, business information models and data domain designs across complex enterprise environments.

• Set practical architecture standards for data products, data flows, integration patterns, metadata and data lifecycle management.

• Design scalable cloud data platforms and lakehouse solutions using Microsoft Fabric, One Lake, Azure Data Factory, Azure Databricks, Azure Synapse and related Azure services.

• Define approaches for batch and real-time data ingestion, transformation, storage, integration and consumption.

• Guide the design of data products, pipelines and…