GCP Data Architect

The Role

The GCP Solution Architect/Data Architect plays a critical role in designing, governing, and delivering enterprise-scale data and cloud solutions across finance transformation programmes. This hybrid position combines strategic solution architecture with hands-on data architecture expertise to enable resilient, scalable, and cost-effective data platforms. The role ensures alignment with enterprise standards, supports quarterly planning, and guides engineering teams through iterative delivery cycles.

Key Responsibilities

Solution Architecture

Data Architecture

GCP Engineering Alignment

Collaboration & Governance

Solution Architecture

• Lead end-to-end architecture design for cloud-native data solutions on GCP.
• Shape architectural direction, ensuring alignment with security, data governance, and compliance standards.
• Drive iterative design practices, influencing product owners, engineering teams, and cross-platform stakeholders.
• Develop architectural roadmaps supporting quarterly planning cycles and long-term finance transformation goals.

Data Architecture

• Design conceptual, logical, and physical data models for financial, regulatory, and operational datasets.
• Define ingestion, transformation, storage, and consumption patterns.
• Establish principles for metadata, lineage, reference data, and data stewardship.
• Collaborate with SMEs to translate business requirements into scalable data models.

GCP Engineering Alignment

• Architect solutions using GCP services such as BigQuery, Cloud Storage, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, Composer, Cloud Functions, and IAM.
• Design cost-optimized workloads and implement best practices for performance and scalability.
• Support engineering teams with reusable patterns, blueprint architectures, and cloud engineering guidance.

Collaboration & Governance

• Work with CTO architects, data platform teams, and transformation leads to influence platform decisions.
• Participate in architecture boards, design forums, and technical governance committees.
• Clearly articulate technical decisions and direction to non-technical and senior stakeholders.

Key Requirements

• Strong expertise in GCP architecture (BigQuery, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, IAM, Composer).
• Proven experience designing complex, cross-team, enterprise-scale solutions.
• Advanced data modelling (3NF, Data Vault, dimensional modelling).
• Deep understanding of metadata, lineage, data governance, and reference data frameworks.
• Strong experience with finance data flows-ledger, MI, reconciliation, and reporting.
• Ability to lead engineering teams and drive architectural consistency.

Qualifications

• Google Professional Cloud Architect (PCA) - preferred.
• Google Professional Data Engineer (PDE) - preferred.
• TOGAF or equivalent enterprise architecture certification - desirable.

Desirable

• Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines (Cloud Build, GitHub Actions, Jenkins).
• Infrastructure as Code using Terraform.
• Familiarity with data quality and lineage tools.
• Understanding of hybrid and multi-cloud patterns.
• Strong communication, negotiation, and stakeholder management skills.