GCP Data Architect

Job Title: GCP Data Architect

Job Type: Contract · Inside IR35

Location: Bristol — Hybrid (2 days a week)

Duration: 8 months

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.

Your responsibilities

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.

Essential skills/knowledge/experience

• 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 skills/knowledge/experience

• 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.