Data Architect

Join Ascent and help shape the future of data solutions by becoming a valued team member where your skills matter, your impact is significant, and your career can reach new heights.

About Us

We are Ascent! and we help our customers solve problems, elevate, and do existing things better. We are on a mission to help our customers connect data, software, and purpose to create extraordinary outcomes. You could say we are a digital transformation business. 

We specialize in software product development, analytics, data science, IoT solutions, machine learning, DevOps optimization, and modernization of applications, data, and platforms. 

We work with incredible clients in all types of industries such as smart home devices, space exploration, beer manufacturing, finance, ecology, and logistics. We work with some of the sharpest minds in the brightest businesses and we employ the sharpest minds too! 

At Ascent, we also believe in fostering a vibrant office community where collaboration thrives and connections flourish. With our hybrid approach, we prioritize hiring individuals who reside in close proximity to our central offices in Bristol and London. Our aim is to cultivate a positive atmosphere and sense of belonging by facilitating easy access to the office. Join us in shaping a workplace where proximity enhances collaboration while inclusivity strengthens our community.
We are a Microsoft Azure focused consultancy and services company, specializing in App Innovation, Data, AI, and Cloud Infrastructure solutions. Recognized as a Fabric Featured Partner by Microsoft we build and deploy data platforms for our customers on Fabric, Databricks and Synapse analytics, offering the opportunity to shape cutting-edge data initiatives for a wide range of clients.

About the role 

Our Data Architects play a crucial role in shaping and optimising our customers’ data landscape, ensuring robust, scalable, governed solutions, built on the latest Azure technology using best practice process and tools.

You will be a practitioner and provide technical leadership and strategic oversight to ensure our customers harness data effectively, driving return on investment for their business. 

If you're passionate about designing and building leading edge, high-performing data solutions that support business models and help drive customer’s future growth, this is the role for you. 

Your responsibilities will include:

• Solution Design: Understand and elaborate customer vision and Architect cloud-based data platforms to meet their needs following Microsoft, Ascent and industry best practice.
• Data Modelling & Design: Build and evolve conceptual, logical, and physical enterprise data models. 
• Data Products: Elaborate customer requirements into actionable backlog items ready for engineering by the development team into artefacts like data pipelines, notebooks, models, visualizations, etc. 
• Stakeholder Management: Collaborate and communicate with business and technical stakeholders to ensure projects stay on track and delight customers. 
• Pre-Sales: Identify new opportunities, drive new project phases and provide technical input to the pre-sales team based on project experience and expertise. 
• Knowledge: Staying up to date with advancements in the data ecosystem, particularly within the Microsoft technology stack, and mentoring delivery teams on best practices. 
• Data Governance: Understand customer data governance requirements and how to address them in solution architecture and operational processes. 

Key Responsibilities 

• Solution Architecture: Design solutions that meet clients’ functional and non-functional requirements, ensuring fit for purpose, scalability, performance, and maintainability. 
• Data Strategy & Roadmap: Define and document technical delivery plans, ensuring clear next steps for the current phase and future expansion of projects. 
• Governance & Standards: Advocate and enforce best practices in data modelling, DataOps, CI/CD, and security across projects. 
• Documentation & Knowledge Transfer: Maintain high-quality technical documentation, ensuring clarity for both engineering teams and business stakeholders. 
• Industry Awareness: Stay informed on Microsoft Fabric and comparable platforms like Databricks and Synapse, understanding their differences and relevance to projects. 

Experience & Skills 

You should have strong soft skills in stakeholder engagement, with the ability to build technical credibility and take a consulting-led approach to sales and delivery. 

You will likely also have: 

• Hands-on architecture and implementation experience with Microsoft Fabric (preferred), along with familiarity with Azure Synapse and Databricks. 
• Experience in core data platform technologies and methods including Spark, Delta Lake, Medallion Architecture, pipelines, etc. 
• Experience leading medium to large-scale cloud data platform implementations, guiding teams through technical challenges and ensuring alignment with best practices. 
• Expertise in data modelling and Lakehouse architecture, particularly in designing robust medallion architecture patterns (bronze, silver, gold layers). 
• Strong knowledge of CI/CD practices for data pipelines, ensuring automated, repeatable, and scalable deployments. 
• Familiarity with open-source data tools such as Spark, and an understanding of how they complement cloud data platforms. 
• Experience creating and maintaining structured technical roadmaps, ensuring successful delivery and future scalability of data solutions. 
• A track record of providing technical input for pre-sales engagements, supporting proposal development by offering architectural insights. 
• Knowledge or data governance tools and processes like Purview and Unity Catalogue. 

Why Join Us? 

At Ascent, you’ll be working with a passionate team of experts in Microsoft Fabric, AI, and data-driven transformation. You’ll have the opportunity to lead cutting-edge projects, mentor engineering teams, and help shape the future of data platforms for our clients. 

Working at Ascent

At Ascent we promote a healthy work-life balance by offering flexibility in where you work. We also promote well-being and provide access to Well Being Coaches.
Your development and learning will be taken seriously, and we’ll support your professional development with training and certification, with regular feedback and review. It is a fun, supportive and modern workplace where we really live by our company values of Empathy, Energy and Audacity! Ascent also offers a variety of benefits in each of our countries. 
Ascent is an equal opportunities employee. We take intentional steps to ensure inclusion and belonging are something real here, not just something we talk about. No person will be treated less favorably because of their gender, pregnancy, and maternity status, marital or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, race, nationality, ethnic origin, age, religion or belief, or disability status. If you require any reasonable accommodation, please let us know when you apply.