Principal Data Architect Data

Our client is seeking a Senior or Principal level Architect to provide senior technical leadership across their Data practice and client engagements.
This is a highly technical, client-facing role for someone who can move comfortably between enterprise data architecture, hands-on technical execution, and strategic conversations with customers. You will own the end-to-end technical direction and successful delivery of complex engagements while helping define the standards, patterns, and capabilities that allow the engineering organization to scale.
Key Focus: You are close to GCP services, lead strong architecture solutions, and partner with the commercial team to win and deliver projects.
Responsibilities
Act as the senior technical referent for complex Data engagements, owning key architecture decisions and ensuring successful technical delivery
Work directly with clients to understand their business requirements, data landscape, and technical challenges, translating them into scalable solutions on Google Cloud
Define architectures across data platforms, pipelines, modeling, integration, governance, security, and scalability
Remain a hands-on technical practitioner, supporting engineering teams with complex implementation challenges and unblocking delivery when needed
Develop estimates around the skills, resources, and timelines required to deliver engagements and translate these into clear technical proposals
Partner closely with Data Engineers, Cloud Architects, and AI/ML teams to design solutions that integrate Cloud, Data, and AI capabilities
Help establish and evolve architectural standards, reusable patterns, and engineering best practices across the Data practice
Mentor and enable engineers and architects, helping raise the technical bar across the organization
Support solutioning and pre-sales conversations, partnering with the commercial team to help customers understand both the technical approach and business value of proposed solutions
Occasionally travel to meet clients, partners, and team members (conferences, offsites, client engagements)
Required Qualifications
Deep, hands-on experience designing and delivering enterprise-scale data architectures in complex cloud environments
Strong expertise with the Google Cloud data ecosystem, particularly BigQuery and related GCP services
Advanced SQL skills and strong Python proficiency
Proven experience with modern data engineering and orchestration technologies (dbt, Cloud Composer, Airflow, and related tools)
Experience designing scalable data platforms, pipelines, data models, and integration patterns
Strong understanding of data governance, security, quality, lineage, and observability
Ability to translate complex business and data requirements into a clear technical vision, architecture, and delivery roadmap
Ability to move comfortably between high-level architectural thinking and hands-on technical execution
Strong software engineering fundamentals and understanding of development best practices
Experience leading large-scale data modernization and transformation initiatives
Strong stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence both engineering teams and senior client stakeholders
Proven ability to work with commercial and sales teams to shape, pitch, and win projects
Experience in professional services, consulting, or cloud partner environments is highly desirable
Strong communication skills; ability to explain complex technical decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences
Location & Travel
Based: UK, ideally London or Greater London
Remote: Primarily remote, with flexibility for occasional travel to meet clients, partners, and team members (conferences, offsites, collaborative sessions)
About Nelly Works
Nelly Works is aa specialist talent consultancy focusing in recruiting senior technical and commercial talent for high-growth deep tech, cloud and AI-focused organizations. We understand the nuances of building world-class teams and match exceptional talent with the right opportunities.

Work arrangement
Yes