Senior Data Architect - Freelance

Role Summary :
We are looking for a hands-on Senior Data Architect with deep technical expertise to lead the onboarding of Business Units onto our enterprise Data & AI platform.
This is not a presales or high-level architecture role. We are looking for someone who combines strong technical depth with business understanding to act as the Design Authority across source assessment, integration, canonical data modelling, data quality, AI, and end-to-end solution delivery.
The architect will work closely with business stakeholders, data engineers and data quality engineers to build trusted, reusable enterprise data products and ensure successful handover to local teams.

Key Responsibilities :
- Assess existing data platforms and source systems.
- Define the best integration strategy (batch, CDC, streaming).
- Co-design canonical data models with business owners.
- Assess data quality and define remediation priorities with DQ engineers.
- Design end-to-end data architectures and reusable data products.
- Ensure trusted data through lineage, governance and shared business definitions.
- Accelerate delivery using AI and build AI-ready data products.
- Act as Design Authority throughout the onboarding lifecycle.
- Transfer knowledge and hand over solutions to local teams.
Mandatory Skills :

Data Architecture :
- Enterprise Data Architecture
- Data Modeling (Conceptual, Logical & Physical)
- Canonical Data Modeling
- Data Governance & Lineage
- Solution Design Authority

Databricks & Spark (Deep Expertise) :
- Databricks Platform
- Apache Spark / PySpark
- Delta Lake
- Unity Catalog
- Structured Streaming
- Spark Performance Tuning
- Medallion Architecture
- Databricks Workflows / DLT (Lakeflow)

Azure Data Platform :
- Azure Databricks
- Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2
- Azure Data Factory
- Azure Event Hubs
- Azure Functions
- Azure Key Vault
- Synapse Analytics

Integration :
- Apache Kafka
- Batch & Streaming Architectures
- CDC
- Event-Driven Architecture
- REST APIs
- Airbyte (or equivalent ingestion platforms)

Data Quality :
- Data Profiling
- Data Quality Frameworks
- DQ Scorecards
- Root Cause Analysis
- Business Data Quality Assessment

Functional & Business :
- Business Process Analysis
- Workshop Facilitation
- Stakeholder Management
- Business-to-Technical Translation

Nice to Have :
- AI / GenAI / Agentic AI
- RAG & Vector Search
- LLM Integration
- Domain-Driven Design (DDD)
- Event Sourcing
- Terraform / Infrastructure as Code
- CI/CD for Data Platforms
- Knowledge Graphs
- Data Contracts

What We Are Looking For : Someone who can
- Dive deep into complex source systems.
- Design scalable batch and streaming architectures.
- Build trusted canonical models across Business Units.
- Validate integration and data quality strategies.
- Deliver end-to-end business use cases.
- Use AI to accelerate delivery and improve productivity.
- Coach and enable local teams for successful handover.
- Create reusable patterns that continuously improve the enterprise platform.
We are looking for a technical leader who can design, build, and validate enterprise data solutions—not someone focused primarily on presales or high-level architecture documentation.