GCP Data Architect - Hybrid - Inside IR35

Location: Bristol - Hybrid, 2 days per week onsite

Contract: 8 months
Rate: £500 per day

We are looking for an experienced GCP Data Architect/Solution Architect to support a major finance transformation programme.

You will be responsible for designing and governing enterprise-scale cloud and data solutions on Google Cloud Platform, combining strategic solution architecture with hands-on data architecture expertise. The role will focus on building scalable, resilient and cost-effective data platforms while providing architectural direction to engineering teams and senior stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end architecture design for cloud-native data solutions on GCP.
• Define architectural direction aligned with security, data governance and compliance standards.
• Design conceptual, logical and physical data models for financial, regulatory and operational datasets.
• Define data ingestion, transformation, storage and consumption patterns.
• Establish standards for metadata, lineage, reference data and data stewardship.
• Architect solutions using GCP services including BigQuery, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, Composer, Cloud Storage, Cloud Functions and IAM.
• Design scalable, high-performing and cost-optimised cloud workloads.
• Develop reusable architecture patterns and blueprints for engineering teams.
• Work closely with CTO architects, data platform teams, SMEs and transformation leads.
• Present architectural decisions clearly to technical and senior non-technical stakeholders.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Strong hands-on expertise in GCP architecture, particularly BigQuery, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, IAM and Composer.
• Proven experience designing complex, enterprise-scale solutions across multiple teams.
• Advanced data modelling experience including 3NF, Data Vault and dimensional modelling.
• Strong knowledge of metadata, data lineage, governance and reference data frameworks.
• Experience working with finance data flows, including ledger, MI, reconciliation and reporting.
• Proven ability to lead engineering teams and drive architectural consistency.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills.

Desirable Skills

• Terraform/Infrastructure as Code.
• CI/CD experience using Cloud Build, GitHub Actions or Jenkins.
• Experience with data quality and lineage tooling.
• Understanding of hybrid and multi-cloud architecture patterns.
• Google Professional Cloud Architect or Professional Data Engineer certification.
• TOGAF or equivalent enterprise architecture certification.

This is an excellent opportunity for an experienced GCP Data Architect to play a key role in the design and delivery of a large-scale finance transformation programme.