Data Architect Sr. Advisor

Role: Fabric Architect

Total Experience: 12+ years
Relevant Experience: 8+ years

Role Overview

The Lead Fabric Architect will own the end-to-end technical architecture and design assurance for the Microsoft Fabric platform. The role will define high-level and low-level designs, establish platform guardrails, guide capacity and workspace design, and ensure the solution is secure, scalable, supportable and aligned with enterprise architecture standards.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the solution architecture, including High-Level Design (HLD), Low-Level Design (LLD), architecture decisions and technical design documentation.
• Define Microsoft Fabric platform architecture, workspace topology, capacity planning, environment strategy and workload allocation.
• Establish architectural guardrails covering security, identity, networking, governance, naming conventions and resource management.
• Define architecture patterns for Lakehouse, Warehouse, OneLake, shortcuts, data ingestion, transformation and consumption, as applicable to the solution.
• Guide the implementation of development, test, UAT and production environments and their promotion strategy.
• Provide technical authority across platform engineering, data engineering, DevOps, analytics and AI workstreams.
• Review and assure designs for scalability, performance, resilience, maintainability, security and cost optimisation.
• Define integration patterns with Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Power BI, Power Platform and other required enterprise services.
• Guide monitoring, observability, operational support, disaster recovery and business continuity design, as applicable.
• Support technical risk management, design reviews, proof of concepts and resolution of complex architectural issues.

Required Skills and Experience

• 15+ years of overall IT experience, including 10+ years in solution architecture, data platform architecture or cloud engineering.
• Strong hands-on expertise in Microsoft Fabric architecture and its core capabilities.
• Experience designing enterprise data platforms using Lakehouse, Warehouse, OneLake, Direct Lake, semantic models and related Fabric services.
• Strong understanding of Fabric capacity management, workspace architecture, security, access control and environment management.
• Experience defining HLDs, LLDs, architecture standards, design patterns and technical governance.
• Strong understanding of Microsoft Entra ID, Azure security, networking, integration and enterprise identity patterns.
• Knowledge of data governance, data lifecycle management, monitoring, performance optimisation and cost management.
• Ability to lead technical discussions, challenge design decisions and guide engineering teams.

Preferred: Experience in banking or regulated environments, with familiarity with enterprise security, auditability, data protection and technology risk requirements.