Microsoft Fabric Architect – AR

Job description

Purpose of the job

The Microsoft Fabric Architect will provide strategic and technical leadership for the council’s enterprise data and analytics platform. The role will review, validate and enhance the council’s Microsoft Fabric architecture, governance framework and operating model.

Working closely with the Data and Platforms Team, the postholder will ensure the platform remains scalable, secure, supportable and cost-effective, and that it aligns with Microsoft best practice and the council’s wider technology and digital ambitions.

This is a senior architecture and governance role requiring a holistic view across platform architecture, data design, security, governance, service operation and organisational adoption. It is not primarily a data engineering or report development position.

Principal accountabilities

Responsibilities:

• Lead the review, optimisation and technical assurance of the council’s Microsoft Fabric architecture, including new solutions, significant changes and alignment with Microsoft and enterprise architecture best practice.
• Define and validate architecture patterns for OneLake, Lakehouses, Warehouses, notebooks, data pipelines, dataflows, semantic models, Power BI and supporting Azure services.
• Review and strengthen the council’s Bronze, Silver and Gold Medallion architecture, ensuring that transformations, reusable data products and reporting layers are consistent, scalable and supportable.
• Review and strengthen Fabric and supporting Azure governance standards, including resource groups, subscriptions, ownership, tagging, RBAC, monitoring, cost management, workspace creation, lifecycle management and environment separation.
• Identify and control any Azure resources deployed within Fabric-related resource groups, ensuring they are documented, justified, supportable and subject to appropriate architecture, security and governance review.
• Define architectural guardrails for appropriate self-service analytics and service-led development, while avoiding duplication, uncontrolled platform growth or weakening of enterprise governance.
• Advise on where Microsoft Fabric should be used, including enterprise reporting, recurring reporting, cross-service analysis and data matching, and where operational requirements are better met through line-of-business systems.
• Review security boundaries, workspace permissions, sensitivity controls, sharing arrangements, access models, user accounts, service accounts, service principals, managed identities, workspace identity, Key Vault and governed connections.
• Ensure architecture and governance approaches support UK GDPR, information governance, data minimisation, DPIA and data-sharing requirements, and wider public sector obligations.
• Review and enhance integration with Microsoft Purview, including data catalogue, metadata, lineage, data ownership, classification and discoverability.
• Review capacity utilisation, performance and consumption patterns, and recommend approaches for capacity monitoring, workload protection, cost optimisation, showback and chargeback.
• Support the council’s approach to Fabric domains, workspaces, data products, semantic model ownership and business accountability.
• Define appropriate Dev, Test and Production practices, including source control, deployment pipelines, release management, testing, documentation and operational handover.
• Provide architectural input for AI, Copilot and advanced analytics use cases that depend on governed and trusted council data.
• Produce clear architecture diagrams, decision records, standards, roadmaps, options papers and recommendations for technical and senior stakeholder audiences.
• Work effectively with technical teams, data owners, information governance, cyber security, service leads, suppliers and Microsoft to resolve issues and agree sustainable solutions.
• Provide mentoring, design assurance and knowledge transfer to data engineers, analysts, developers and platform administrators within the Data and Platforms Team.
• Manage and prioritise their own work, identifying risks, dependencies and opportunities, escalating decisions where appropriate and undertaking other reasonable duties aligned with the role.

Knowledge, experience and skills

Essential experience:

• Proven experience designing, reviewing and implementing enterprise-scale Microsoft Fabric solutions.
• Strong knowledge of OneLake, Lakehouse, Warehouse, notebooks, pipelines, dataflows, semantic models and Power BI.
• Experience defining enterprise data architectures, Medallion patterns, reusable data products and governance frameworks.
• Strong understanding of security, identities, access management, data protection and compliance controls in Microsoft cloud environments.
• Experience of Azure data platform services, Azure resource groups, subscriptions, RBAC, tagging, monitoring and integration patterns.
• Experience producing architecture documentation, standards, operating models and delivery roadmaps.
• Strong stakeholder management, communication and technical leadership skills, including the ability to explain complex issues clearly to non-technical audiences.
• Experience providing design assurance, mentoring and knowledge transfer to multidisciplinary teams.

Desirable experience:

• Microsoft Purview implementation and data governance.
• Local government or wider public sector data and technology delivery.
• Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Factory and migration from legacy data platforms.
• Fabric capacity management, FinOps, workload optimisation and organisational chargeback models.
• AI, Copilot, machine learning or advanced analytics within a governed enterprise environment.
• Power Platform and Dataverse integration patterns.
• Working with sensitive personal data and formal information governance processes.

Key deliverables

• A Fabric and supporting Azure architecture review with prioritised recommendations.
• A documented target-state Fabric and Azure supporting environment architecture and roadmap.
• Updated architecture, governance and security standards.
• A Fabric operating model and clear responsibilities matrix.
• Capacity management, workload protection and cost optimisation recommendations.A Microsoft Purview and data governance integration roadmap.
• Documented architecture patterns, decision records and reusable guidance.
• Knowledge transfer and mentoring for the Data and Platforms Team.

Job context

Technology and Digital Services sits within the Resources department and provides joined-up technology services and change across Southwark Council. This role sits within the Data and Platforms Team.

Microsoft Fabric is the council’s strategic enterprise data and analytics platform, supporting data ingestion, transformation, storage, semantic modelling, reporting and cross-service analysis. The council requires strong architectural leadership to ensure that the platform grows in a controlled, secure and financially sustainable way.

The Microsoft Fabric Architect will work across technical and business boundaries to strengthen the platform’s target architecture, governance and operating model. The role will help the council maintain enterprise standards while enabling services to access trusted data and deliver appropriate reporting and analytics outcomes.

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