Role: Data and AI Tech Lead
Outside IR35 Contract
Rate: Negotiable
Location: London, UK - Hybrid (Hybrid 1 or 2 Days Onsite a week)
No of positions: 1.
Role Overview
We are seeking a Data & AI Technical Lead to drive the Discovery & Design phase of a large scale M&A program for a Retail & CPG client. This role will lead the technical direction across a complex, multi cloud data landscape spanning Azure, AWS, GCP, Databricks, and Snowflake. You will oversee and guide senior Data Architects, ensuring architectural alignment, technical quality, and business relevance. The role sits at the intersection of business strategy, data architecture, and platform engineering, acting as a key liaison between client stakeholders, IT teams, and the Chief Data Office.
This is a high impact leadership role requiring both hands on architectural depth and stakeholder influence at senior levels.
Key Responsibilities Technical Leadership & Architecture Governance
- Provide strategic and hands on technical leadership across multi cloud data platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP).
- Guide and mentor senior Data Architects, ensuring consistency in design patterns, frameworks, and standards.
- Define interim state, target state, and transitional architectures for M&A integration (data platforms, analytics, AI/ML enablement).
- Establish best practices across Databricks, Snowflake, and cloud native data services.
M&A Discovery & Design
- Lead data discovery across merging entities: systems, pipelines, governance, and data models.
- Define integration strategy (consolidation vs federation vs hybrid).
- Identify synergies, redundancies, and risks in data ecosystems.
- Produce high quality architecture blueprints, roadmaps, and design artifacts.
Stakeholder Management & Liaison
- Business stakeholders.
- Act as the primary technical interface between IT/Engineering teams, Chief Data Office (CDO), and client side architects and leadership.
- Translate business objectives into scalable technical solutions.
- Facilitate architecture reviews, design workshops, and decision forums.
Data & AI Strategy Enablement
- Define foundations for advanced analytics, AI/ML, and data products post M&A.
- Align architecture with data governance, security, and compliance frameworks.
- Enable scalable, future proof data platforms supporting Retail & CPG use cases (e.g., demand forecasting, customer 360, supply chain optimization).
Delivery Oversight
- Review and validate design outputs from architects and engineering teams.
- Ensure architectural integrity during discovery and early delivery phases.
- Manage risks, dependencies, and technical trade offs.
- Support estimation, planning, and prioritization activities.
Required Skills & Experience
- 15+ years in Data & Analytics, with 5+ years in leadership roles.
Strong hands on experience across
- Azure cloud, ADF, DevOps, Power BI, Fabric workspaces.
- AWS cloud, S3, cross cloud connectivity, API Gateways.
- GCP (BigQuery, GCS, Dataflow)
- Databricks (Lakehouse architecture, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Delta Sharing, PySpark, Spark SQL, etc.).
- Snowflake (data warehousing & data sharing, Iceberg)
- Data architecture patterns, industry benchmarking.
- Data integration patterns (ETL/ELT, streaming, CDC, APIs).
- Data governance & metadata management.
Architecture & M&A Experience
- Proven experience in M&A data integration, platform consolidation, or carve outs.
- Experience designing multi cloud or hybrid data architectures.
- Familiarity with enterprise architecture frameworks (TOGAF or equivalent).
Leadership & Stakeholder Skills
- Experience managing or leading senior architects or technical teams.
- Strong communication skills with the ability to influence C level stakeholders.
- Ability to bridge business strategy and technical execution.
- Experience working in consulting or client facing roles.