Data Architect - Azure | Banking AI Lab

About the Role

A leading banking institution in Abu Dhabi has established a new AI Lab and is seeking a Data Architect with a specialization in Azure technologies. This pivotal position entails designing and maintaining the data architecture and platform foundations crucial for scaling AI, analytics, and data-driven products within the bank.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and define enterprise-wide data architecture to support AI, analytics, and other data products.
• Design scalable, secure, and high-performing data platforms on Microsoft Azure.
• Develop architectures for modern data lakes, lakehouses, and data warehouses.
• Establish patterns for data ingestion, integration, transformation, storage, and consumption organization-wide.
• Collaborate closely with Data Engineers, Data Scientists, AI Engineers, Software Engineers, and Product teams to align data platforms with AI production use cases.
• Set standards for data modelling, governance, quality, metadata, lineage, and security.
• Architect solutions for both structured and unstructured data, incorporating requirements for GenAI and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) applications.
• Provide architectural guidance on real-time, batch, and streaming data processing.
• Evaluate emerging Azure and data technologies for enterprise suitability.
• Ensure compliance with banking standards on security, privacy, regulatory policies, resilience, and scalability.
• Establish technical foundations and standards for the AI Lab.

Required Skills and Technologies

• Proven expertise in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, Azure Data Factory, Synapse Pipelines, and Azure Synapse Analytics.
• Working knowledge of Microsoft Fabric and other modern lakehouse architectures.
• Experience with Azure Databricks, Azure Event Hubs, and streaming data technologies.
• Familiarity with Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, Microsoft Purview, and Azure security, networking, and identity services.
• Understanding of Azure AI, Azure OpenAI, and data architectures that support GenAI and RAG workloads.

Candidate Profile

• Minimum 10 years’ experience in Data Architecture, Data Engineering, or managing Enterprise Data Platforms.
• Demonstrated success in designing large-scale enterprise data architectures.
• Strong hands-on experience with Azure data technologies and cloud-native architectural patterns.
• In-depth knowledge of data lakehouse, data warehouse, data mesh, and contemporary data platform methodologies.
• Proficient in large-scale data integration, ETL/ELT workflows, and both batch and streaming data systems.
• Comprehensive understanding of data modelling, governance, lineage, quality control, and security.
• Experience developing data platforms to facilitate AI, machine learning, and GenAI workloads.
• Advanced understanding of cloud architecture concepts, APIs, microservices, and distributed systems.
• Background in banking, financial services, fintech, or other heavily regulated sectors is highly beneficial.
• Exceptional communication skills to interact effectively with senior leadership and technical teams alike.

What Sets You Apart

The ideal candidate will be a technically adept, hands-on Data Architect rather than one focused solely on governance or documentation. Candidates with direct experience building modern Azure data platforms at scale, and a clear grasp of data foundations to support AI and analytics in a banking context, will stand out. This role offers the opportunity to contribute significantly to shaping the AI Lab’s data architecture and technology standards from an early stage.

Additional Information

Only shortlisted applicants will be contacted.