Lead Data Architect (Grade M1)

Lead Data Architect (Grade M1)

Application Deadline: 27 September 2026

Department: Corporate Services

Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time

Location: Edinburgh - Hybrid

Compensation: Grade M1 £66,924 to £78,930. Civil Service Pension with Employer Contribution of 28.97%. Flexible Working Hours. Hybrid Working.

Description

Our ambition is for Scotland to be the best place in the world to learn, educate, research and innovate, so that all of our nation can flourish.

Our purpose is to create and sustain a world-leading system of tertiary education, research and innovation that changes lives for the better, enriches society and supports sustainable and inclusive economic growth.

The role is to provide leadership for SFC's data architecture, establishing data models, standards and design principles that enable trusted, connected and effective use of data to support organisational priorities and informed decision making.

Key Responsibilities

• Act as SFCs authority for Data Architecture, providing specialist expertise, thought leadership, and guidance on data design, modelling, and data architecture standards.
• Define, maintain, and evolve SFCs data architecture, ensuring alignment with organisational priorities, data strategy and future business needs.
• Lead the development and maintenance of enterprise, domain, conceptual, logical and physical data models, creating a shared understanding of data across SFC.
• Establish and maintain data architecture principles, standards, reference architectures and design patterns that support trusted, scalable, and sustainable use of data.
• Lead data architecture governance and design assurance, providing challenge, recommendations and architectural oversight for significant data initiatives and programmes.
• Provide expert advice to senior stakeholders, influencing decisions through evidence-based recommendations and helping teams understand architectural options, risks and trade-offs.
• Build consensus across teams and programmes, ensuring data architecture standards and principles are consistently applied across platforms, solutions and services.
• Define architecture approaches that improve interoperability, integration, governance, and reuse of data, supporting more efficient and joined-up services across SFC.
• Identify and manage data architecture related risks, technical debt and opportunities, ensuring emerging issues are addressed and escalated appropriately.
• Promote data architecture capability and maturity across SFC by coaching, mentoring and supporting colleagues, fostering greater understanding and adoption of good architecture practices.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

It is important through your CV / Cover Letter that you give evidence of proven experience of each of the following essential criteria:

Essential:

• Significant experience defining, implementing and evolving data architectures that support organisational strategy, transformation, and business outcomes.
• Demonstrable expertise in conceptual, logical and physical data modelling, including the development of enterprise and domain level data models.
• Experience establishing architecture principles, standards, governance processes and design assurance that support consistent and effective decision making.
• Strong understanding of data management and governance practises, including metadata, lineage, reference, master data, stewardship, with the ability to embed these principals into data architecture design.
• Experience designing data architecture for modern cloud-based data platforms, data integration patterns, preferably with Microsoft Azure ecosystem and Microsoft Fabric.
• Experience aligning data architecture decisions with organisational strategy, ensuring data models, standards and approaches support current priorities and future transformation.
• Proven ability to influence decisions, build consensus, and secure adoption of standards across teams without direct reporting authority.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts, risks, options and recommendations clearly to technical and non-technical audiences, including senior stakeholders.
• Ability to provide technical leadership through expertise, coaching and collaboration, supporting adoption of good data practise.
• Demonstrable ability to analyse complex issues, evaluate options and make evidence-based recommendations in situations where risk, ambiguity or limited precedent exists.

Desirable:

• Experience working within education, skills, public sector or other complex data environments involving data sharing, multiple stakeholders and evidence-based decision making.
• Experience with Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Factory, Databricks, PowerBI semantic models or equivalent technologies.
• Professional qualification or certification in Data Architecture, Enterprise Architecture, Data management, or Data Engineering (e.g. TOGAF, DAMA CDMP, MS Azure Solutions Architect, MS Fabric Data Engineer)

Terms and Benefits

• Normal full-time hours of work are 35 per week. We will consider flexible working arrangements. A flexi-time system is in operation.
• Annual leave entitlement of 30 days pro-rata, plus public and privilege holiday entitlement of 13 days pro-rata.
• A flexible approach to hybrid working, giving you flexibility to work from home anywhere in the UK for some of the time while also maintaining regular in-person contact with colleagues.
• Annual pay review: approved within the framework of the Scottish Government’s Public Sector Pay Policy and negotiated with our recognised trade union, Unite. Salaries are reviewed annually in April for employees who commence employment prior to 1 October in the preceding year.
• Eligibility to join the Civil Service Pension Scheme. With its low member contribution rates and generous employer contributions, this gives you a secure, inflation-proof pension for life with no investment uncertainty. Details of contribution rates together with further details of the pension benefits are available on the Civil Service Pensions website. There is also the option of a Partnership pension account.
• Support for continuous professional development: as a part of SFC, we are dedicated to providing comprehensive support for continuous learning and professional development. Civil Service-Learning curriculum has thoughtfully designed to cater to various learning preferences, allowing employees to engage in a manner that best suits their needs. All our educational resources are conveniently accessible through the CSL website.
• Support for health and wellbeing, including generous occupational sick pay, free access to confidential advice and support through our 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme, Special Leave (paid and unpaid), a contribution to learning outside work through our Lifelong Learning Fund, free winter flu vaccination, and access to occupational health support.
• We provide support to SFC employees with Volunteering Days.
• Support for travel to and from work, including a salary sacrifice cycle loan scheme, cycle storage and shower facilities, an interest-free loan for bus or rail season tickets and free office car parking for employees on a first-come basis.

Although most salaried roles are advertised as full time positions (35 hours a week), we are happy to discuss part-time or compressed hours to suit a candidates circumstances. We also operate a flexible working scheme to work around a candidate's other commitments such as caring responsibilities. We will consider secondment applications for most salaried fixed-term or temporary positions and in many cases also for salaried permanent positions.

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