(Data Architect)

Details of the requirement Program Background- High Level

The platform sits within the core card ecosystem. When a card member makes transactions, the transactions flow through multiple systems and ultimately into the AR environment, where they are consolidated, accounted for and reflected in the customer's billing/statement process. There are also corresponding flows into areas such as merchant settlement, creating a need for accurate reconciliation.

The existing environment has significant legacy/batch-oriented architecture. The broader objective is to modernise this towards a more real-time, distributed and cloud-oriented architecture, reducing reliance on traditional batch processing and legacy platforms.

Architect role :

Data Architect Expected Role

The Data Architect is expected to sit between business, solution architecture and engineering and define how the data architecture should work for the modernised platform.

The role involves:

• Understanding the card/payment and billing business processes and translating them into data requirements.
• Designing the target data architecture from scratch, including data models, flows, ownership and integration.
• Making decisions on the right data technology/database for each use case.
• Designing for real-time/event-driven and distributed systems, while maintaining clear sources of truth.
• Working closely with Solution Architects, developers and business teams and challenging/steering technical decisions.
• Taking ownership of the architecture through governance and production, so they need to be confident defending their design decisions.

What he brings:

• Good data experience, particularly around data migration, transformation and ETL.
• Good communication/personality and appears credible and collaborative.
• Has relevant experience working with data and transformation pipelines.

Key gaps:

• Limited evidence of designing a new data architecture from the ground up.
• His experience appears predominantly focused on migration/ETL/transformation, rather than end-to-end architecture ownership.
• No demonstrated Financial Services/Card domain experience, which is important for this role.
• Limited evidence of making broader architectural decisions around distributed systems, data ownership, polyglot persistence, real-time architecture and cloud-native design.
• Therefore, he may be a good data engineering/migration resource, but currently does not appear to meet the bar for the Data Architect role being requested.

Bottom line

experience is weighted towards execution of data migration/transformation rather than architecture ownership.

For this particular role, the client needs someone who can walk into an ambiguous business problem, design the data architecture from scratch, challenge engineering teams, and stand behind that architecture in governance.

Detailed JD

Job Specification - Data Architect (Financial Services)

Role Title

Data Architect Financial Markets / Enterprise Data Architecture

Location

Flexible / Hybrid (depending on project requirements)

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced Data Architect to join a large-scale financial services transformation project. The successful candidate will play a critical role in understanding, documenting, and architecting enterprise data structures across both traditional relational database platforms and modern distributed NoSQL environments.

This role requires strong expertise in RDBMS and NoSQL data architecture using Domain Driven Design and CQRS architectural patterns, enterprise/domain modelling, and the ability to work closely with business and technology stakeholders to define scalable, resilient, and well-governed data solutions for complex financial systems. Familiarity with Wide Column Database Technology (i.e. Cassandra) and distributed Databases (i.e. Yugabyte or GCP Spanner) an advantage

The ideal candidate combines deep technical knowledge with excellent communication and presentation skills and has prior experience working within financial markets, banking, or capital markets environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Understand, analyze, and document existing and target-state data architectures for large financial systems.
• Collaborate with business stakeholders, architects, application teams, and engineering leads to define enterprise data models and integration patterns.
• Develop and maintain:
• Domain models
• Conceptual data models
• Logical data models
• Physical data models
• Design scalable and high-performance database solutions across:
• Relational databases (Oracle/PostgreSQL)
• Distributed NoSQL platforms (Cassandra/YugabyteDB)
• Solutions on prem or on the Cloud
• Define data standards, modelling conventions, governance principles, and metadata documentation.
• Support enterprise-wide data strategy initiatives and contribute to architecture governance reviews.
• Produce architecture documentation, presentations, and technical artifacts for both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Assess current-state systems and recommend modernization or optimization opportunities.
• Work closely with development and infrastructure teams to ensure implementation aligns with architectural guidelines.
• Participate in data migration, integration, and transformation planning activities.
• Support performance, scalability, resiliency, and disaster recovery considerations within data architecture designs.

Required Skills & Experience

Technical Skills

• Strong experience in data architecture and enterprise data modelling.

1. Domain driven design

1. CQRS implementation

• Strong hands-on experience with NoSQL/distributed database design:
• Cassandra
• YugabyteDB
• Deep expertise in relational database design and modelling with RDBMS Technologies such as :
• Oracle
• PostgreSQL
• Solid understanding of:
• Data normalization and denormalization
• Distributed data design
• Data partitioning and replication strategies
• High availability and scalability patterns
• Experience creating:
• Domain models
• Conceptual models
• Logical models
• Physical models
• Hands-on experience with data modelling tools such as:
• ER/Studio (preferred)
• Hackolade (preferred)
• Strong knowledge of enterprise integration and data governance principles.
• Familiarity with cloud and hybrid data architectures is advantageous.

Functional / Domain Experience

• Experience working within:
• Financial services
• Capital markets
• Investment banking
• Trading platforms
• Risk or regulatory environments
• Strong understanding of financial data domains and transactional systems preferred.

Communication & Soft Skills

• Excellent English communication skills (written and verbal).
• Strong presentation and stakeholder engagement capabilities.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both business and technical audiences.
• Strong analytical and documentation skills.
• Ability to work independently in a fast-paced enterprise environment.
• Collaborative mindset with strong problem-solving capabilities.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related discipline.
• Experience working on large enterprise transformation programs.
• Exposure to data governance and enterprise architecture frameworks.
• Financial industry certifications or architecture certifications are a plus.

Preferred Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is:

• A hands-on enterprise data architect
• Comfortable working across both legacy and modern database ecosystems
• Experienced in large-scale financial environments
• Strong in stakeholder communication and architecture documentation
• Able to bridge business requirements with scalable technical data solutions

Details of the requirement

Program Background- High Level

The platform sits within the core card ecosystem. When a card member makes transactions, the transactions flow through multiple systems and ultimately into the AR environment, where they are consolidated, accounted for and reflected in the customer's billing/statement process. There are also corresponding flows into areas such as merchant settlement, creating a need for accurate reconciliation.

The existing environment has significant legacy/batch-oriented architecture. The broader objective is to modernise this towards a more real-time, distributed and cloud-oriented architecture, reducing reliance on traditional batch processing and legacy platforms.

Architect role :

Data Architect Expected Role

The Data Architect is expected to sit between business, solution architecture and engineering and define how the data architecture should work for the modernised platform.

The role involves:

• Understanding the card/payment and billing business processes and translating them into data requirements.
• Designing the target data architecture from scratch, including data models, flows, ownership and integration.
• Making decisions on the right data technology/database for each use case.
• Designing for real-time/event-driven and distributed systems, while maintaining clear sources of truth.
• Working closely with Solution Architects, developers and business teams and challenging/steering technical decisions.
• Taking ownership of the architecture through governance and production, so they need to be confident defending their design decisions.

What he brings:

• Good data experience, particularly around data migration, transformation and ETL.
• Good communication/personality and appears credible and collaborative.
• Has relevant experience working with data and transformation pipelines.

Key gaps:

• Limited evidence of designing a new data architecture from the ground up.
• His experience appears predominantly focused on migration/ETL/transformation, rather than end-to-end architecture ownership.
• No demonstrated Financial Services/Card domain experience, which is important for this role.
• Limited evidence of making broader architectural decisions around distributed systems, data ownership, polyglot persistence, real-time architecture and cloud-native design.
• Therefore, he may be a good data engineering/migration resource, but currently does not appear to meet the bar for the Data Architect role being requested.

Bottom line

experience is weighted towards execution of data migration/transformation rather than architecture ownership.

For this particular role, the client needs someone who can walk into an ambiguous business problem, design the data architecture from scratch, challenge engineering teams, and stand behind that architecture in governance.

Detailed JD

Job Specification - Data Architect (Financial Services)

Role Title

Data Architect Financial Markets / Enterprise Data Architecture

Location

Flexible / Hybrid (depending on project requirements)

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced Data Architect to join a large-scale financial services transformation project. The successful candidate will play a critical role in understanding, documenting, and architecting enterprise data structures across both traditional relational database platforms and modern distributed NoSQL environments.

This role requires strong expertise in RDBMS and NoSQL data architecture using Domain Driven Design and CQRS architectural patterns, enterprise/domain modelling, and the ability to work closely with business and technology stakeholders to define scalable, resilient, and well-governed data solutions for complex financial systems. Familiarity with Wide Column Database Technology (i.e. Cassandra) and distributed Databases (i.e. Yugabyte or GCP Spanner) an advantage

The ideal candidate combines deep technical knowledge with excellent communication and presentation skills and has prior experience working within financial markets, banking, or capital markets environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Understand, analyze, and document existing and target-state data architectures for large financial systems.
• Collaborate with business stakeholders, architects, application teams, and engineering leads to define enterprise data models and integration patterns.
• Develop and maintain:
• Domain models
• Conceptual data models
• Logical data models
• Physical data models
• Design scalable and high-performance database solutions across:
• Relational databases (Oracle/PostgreSQL)
• Distributed NoSQL platforms (Cassandra/YugabyteDB)
• Solutions on prem or on the Cloud
• Define data standards, modelling conventions, governance principles, and metadata documentation.
• Support enterprise-wide data strategy initiatives and contribute to architecture governance reviews.
• Produce architecture documentation, presentations, and technical artifacts for both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Assess current-state systems and recommend modernization or optimization opportunities.
• Work closely with development and infrastructure teams to ensure implementation aligns with architectural guidelines.
• Participate in data migration, integration, and transformation planning activities.
• Support performance, scalability, resiliency, and disaster recovery considerations within data architecture designs.

Required Skills & Experience

Technical Skills

• Strong experience in data architecture and enterprise data modelling.

1. Domain driven design

1. CQRS implementation

• Strong hands-on experience with NoSQL/distributed database design:
• Cassandra
• YugabyteDB
• Deep expertise in relational database design and modelling with RDBMS Technologies such as :
• Oracle
• PostgreSQL
• Solid understanding of:
• Data normalization and denormalization
• Distributed data design
• Data partitioning and replication strategies
• High availability and scalability patterns
• Experience creating:
• Domain models
• Conceptual models
• Logical models
• Physical models
• Hands-on experience with data modelling tools such as:
• ER/Studio (preferred)
• Hackolade (preferred)
• Strong knowledge of enterprise integration and data governance principles.
• Familiarity with cloud and hybrid data architectures is advantageous.

Functional / Domain Experience

• Experience working within:
• Financial services
• Capital markets
• Investment banking
• Trading platforms
• Risk or regulatory environments
• Strong understanding of financial data domains and transactional systems preferred.

Communication & Soft Skills

• Excellent English communication skills (written and verbal).
• Strong presentation and stakeholder engagement capabilities.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both business and technical audiences.
• Strong analytical and documentation skills.
• Ability to work independently in a fast-paced enterprise environment.
• Collaborative mindset with strong problem-solving capabilities.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related discipline.
• Experience working on large enterprise transformation programs.
• Exposure to data governance and enterprise architecture frameworks.
• Financial industry certifications or architecture certifications are a plus.