Databricks Data Architect

Contract Data Architect – Databricks / AWS – Remote Europe

Location: Remote Central/Eastern Europe

Contract: Contract

Duration: 6 months

Rate: Competitive contract rate

The Role

We are looking for an experienced Data Architect to join a major cloud data transformation programme for a leading UK hospitality group.

The programme is migrating approximately 2PB of data and 2,400 pipelines from Azure — including Azure Data Factory, Azure SQL, Cosmos DB and Azure Databricks — onto Databricks on AWS.

The target platform is a governed Databricks medallion architecture using Unity Catalog, operating within a multi-account AWS landing zone.

Of the 37 data products, 23 will follow a structured migration approach, while 14 will be redesigned and consolidated before migration.

The Architect will focus heavily on the redesigned products, working directly with client stakeholders to understand the existing estate, define target solutions and produce detailed designs for the engineering team.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead technical discovery with client stakeholders and data teams.
• Analyse existing data products, pipelines and data models.
• Define target-state architecture and data strategies.
• Produce low-level designs (LLDs) for redesigned and consolidated products.
• Define target table structures, data models and transformation approaches.
• Design solutions using Databricks on AWS.
• Ensure designs align with medallion architecture and Unity Catalog.
• Define appropriate ingestion patterns across SFTP, APIs and streaming/MSK.
• Work closely with Data Engineers to ensure designs are practical and deliverable.
• Provide architectural guidance throughout migration and build.
• Support technical decisions, design reviews and resolution of complex migration issues.

Essential Experience

• Strong commercial experience as a Data Architect.
• Extensive Databricks experience.
• Strong data modelling and lakehouse architecture experience.
• Experience designing cloud data platforms at scale.
• Experience producing detailed technical / low-level designs.
• Strong stakeholder management and technical discovery skills.
• Experience working closely with engineering teams to take designs through to implementation.

Desirable

• Strong AWS experience.
• Unity Catalog.
• Azure Data Factory and Azure data services.
• Experience with large-scale cloud migrations.
• Streaming / Kafka / MSK.
• API and SFTP ingestion.
• Experience with multi-account AWS landing zones.