Senior Data Architect - ONS - G7

Location

The ONS operates a flexible hybrid working model across the UK, with colleagues linked to one of our contractual locations working between office and remote throughout the week.

The locations for this role are Newport, Titchfield (Fareham), Manchester and London

All colleagues on office-based contracts should be working primarily in their contractually allocated site for at least 40% of their working time. The exception to this is for colleagues based at the Manchester office. Due to current capacity constraints, colleagues based there will only be required to attend the office for 20% of their work time. It is expected Manchester will move to 40% in 2025-2026.

The induction process for the role will be conducted in person.

About the job

Job summary

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social, and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution, and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime and migration. Data Growth and Operations (DGO) provides the statistical infrastructure (in the broadest sense) and underpinning frameworks necessary to enable the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the Government Statistical Service (GSS) and the wider research community to make better use of data.

DGO is structured into three divisions: 

• Data Architecture, Location and Integration (DALI) ensure that data is organised and referenced so that it can be accessed quickly and used appropriately by the organisation.
• Data Acquisitions co-ordinates requirements for new data, bringing it into the ONS environment and making it available across the organisation.
• Data Engineering and Operations (DEOD) prepare data for analytical use and administrate our core data analysis platforms.

A data architect sets the vision for the organisation’s use of data, through data design, to meet business needs.

Data architects:

• Take part in technical and business design authorities in order to approve their vision for data.
• Work with senior accountable officers and boards to define data strategies and principles.
• Make sure that systems are designed, upgraded, managed, de-commissioned and archived in compliance with data policy across the full data life cycle.

Job description

The purpose of the Senior Data Architect role is to lead the work for ensuring that systems are designed, upgraded, managed, de-commissioned and archived in compliance with data policy across the full data life cycle.

This includes complying with the data strategy and providing oversight and advice to other data architects who are undertaking the design of data models and supporting the management of metadata.

The Senior Data Architect also provides guidance to other architects (such as Enterprise Architects and Solutions Architects) to make sure that organisation’s systems are designed in accordance with the appropriate data architecture.

Responsibilities

As a Senior Data Architect, you will play a critical role in leading data architecture contributions to enable and standardise approaches to indexing data in the ONS, designing data and metadata standards for ONS outputs to enable our Content Management System and strategic API to serve the user needs, and supporting the design and delivery of the Enterprise Metadata Management Data Model capability.

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to: 

• Work across stakeholders, including data linkage experts to ensure data architecture plays a key role in the design of ONS indexing. 
• Lead on data architecture contributions to support the design and development of the ONS Content Management System and API. 
• Contribute to the design and delivery of our Enterprise Data Management programme, which includes our Enterprise Data Model, and Enterprise Metadata Management. 
• Participate in cross-government data architecture communities, to help set direction and share your expertise. 
• Champion the work of the DALI division across ONS. 
• Contribute to the ongoing implementation of the ONS data strategy (including data principles, policies and standards) and provide advice to stakeholders on how to comply with the strategy. 
• Line management of a small team one or two data architects or apprentices, and/or matrix management technical work. 
• Play a role in the Data Architecture branch leadership team, particularly supporting the development of technical capabilities of your colleagues.

We require a broad range of skills and experience to deliver the whole package of work of the Data Architecture team. We appreciate that some skills can be developed in post, and we will consider applicants with experience outside of traditional data architecture roles if the essential criteria are demonstrated. Training and opportunities will be provided in post to support your career development as a data architect.

Person specification

Essential Criteria:

• A firm understanding of the concepts and principles of data modelling and an ability to produce relevant data models across multiple subject areas.
• An ability to assure and integrate data services to meet multiple business needs.
• An ability to communicate across a range of technical and business stakeholders, and to interpret between them.
• Capable of proactive and reactive communication, and an ability to facilitate and engage in difficult discussions with diverse stakeholders.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Working Together
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Making Effective Decisions
• Changing and Improving

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• During the interview process you asked to provide a technical based presentation on Communication between the technical and non-technical (Practitioner).
• Data Modelling (Practitioner)