Data and AI - Data Architect or Engineer

Company Description

Be part of a global consulting powerhouse, partnering with clients on their most critical strategic transformations.

We are Wavestone. Energetic, solution-driven experts who focus as much on people as on performance and growth. Hand in hand, we share a deep desire to make a positive impact. We are an ambitious firm with a worldwide reach and an ever-expanding portfolio of clients, topics, and projects.

Recognized by the Financial Times as one of the UK’s Leading Management Consultants 2025, Wavestone UK now boasts a team of 200 employees, with ambitions to rapidly grow in the coming years. Our services span business and digital transformation, cybersecurity, operational improvement, risk advisory, and IT advisory. We exist to provide end-to-end expert advice to clients across industries, with a particular focus on Insurance, Financial Services and Life Sciences – helping them to positively transform into modern, innovative organizations that thrive in a sustainable way.

In 2025, we received the UK’s Great Place to Work accreditation, and we are proud to have been recognized in the following Best Workplaces categories: Large Organizations, Wellbeing, Development and Best Workplace for Women.

Are you a true team player, living strong values? Are you a passionate learner, aiming to grow every day? Are you a driven go-getter, tackling challenges head-on? Then we could be the right fit for you.

Join Wavestone and thrive in an environment that’s empowering, collaborative, and full of opportunities to turn today’s challenges into tomorrow’s solutions.

Job Description

Wavestone is seeking a Data Architect or Data Engineer to support the design and delivery of innovative data solutions for clients operating in complex, regulated environments, including Banking, Insurance, Wealth & Asset Management, and Life Sciences.

In this client-facing role, you will work with business and technology stakeholders to define data architectures, build scalable data platforms and pipelines, and establish strong data governance practices. You will help organisations unlock the value of their data by enabling advanced analytics, AI, and data-driven decision-making, while contributing to the successful delivery of large-scale transformation programmes.

This is an ideal role for someone who combines:

• Strong data architecture and engineering expertise, with the ability to communicate complex concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Experience designing and delivering modern data platforms, pipelines, and integration architectures.

• A solid understanding of data governance, operating models, metadata, lineage, and data quality frameworks.

• The ability to operate across the full data lifecycle, from strategy and architecture through to delivery, adoption, and optimisation.

As a member of the Data & AI Practice, your key responsibilities will cover client delivery, business development, thought leadership, and people development. Depending on your level of experience, you will be expected to:

• Lead & Deliver Engagements: Take a leading role in delivering complex data transformation programmes, helping clients define data strategies, design enterprise data architectures, and implement modern cloud data platforms. You will provide architectural leadership across delivery teams, translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions, and ensure successful outcomes from strategy through to implementation.

• Data Strategy, Architecture & Platform Advisory: Advise clients on enterprise data strategies, target operating models, governance frameworks, and modern architecture patterns including data lakes, data warehouses, lakehouses, and data mesh. You will conduct architecture assessments and provide vendor-independent guidance on platform and technology choices.

• Data Engineering & AI Enablement: Support the design of scalable data pipelines, integration frameworks, and cloud-native data solutions that enable trusted, high-quality data across the organisation. You will help establish the data foundations required for advanced analytics, machine learning, AI, and GenAI use cases.

• Business Development: Act as a trusted advisor and subject matter expert during sales and pre-sales activities, helping shape solution approaches, contribute to proposals and RFP responses, and identify opportunities to grow Wavestone's Data & AI footprint across strategic accounts.

• Thought Leadership & Proposition Development: Contribute to the evolution of Wavestone's data propositions by bringing innovative perspectives on data architecture, cloud platforms, governance, and AI-ready data ecosystems. You will support the development of thought leadership, methodologies, accelerators, and market-facing insights.

• People Development: Help grow Wavestone's Data & AI community through coaching, mentoring, and knowledge sharing. You will support the development of consultants and engineers, contribute to internal capability building, and promote best practices across the practice.

• Maintain Expertise: Stay at the forefront of developments in data architecture, engineering, cloud technologies, analytics, and AI enablement. You will continuously develop your expertise and bring emerging trends, technologies, and best practices into client engagements and internal initiatives.

Qualifications

Core Skills & Experience

• Significant experience in consulting, client-facing roles, or equivalent industry experience delivering data engineering and architecture solutions.

• Strong understanding of data engineering principles, including pipeline design, ETL/ELT, ingestion patterns, orchestration, and integration approaches.

• Experience designing or governing modern data architectures (lakehouse, warehouse, data mesh, data fabric).

• Hands-on experience with one or more cloud data ecosystems:

  • Azure (Data Factory, Synapse, Fabric, ADLS, Databricks)
  • AWS (Glue, Redshift, EMR)
  • GCP (BigQuery, Dataflow)
  • Databricks (Spark/PySpark)
  • Snowflake (SQL, Snowpark, performance tuning)

Desirable Experience

• Strong SQL and/or Python capability, and familiarity with tools such as dbt, Git, CI/CD, or MLOps frameworks.

• Understanding of BI/visualisation principles (Power BI/Tableau) and downstream analytics requirements.

Additional Information

Our commitment: Wavestone values and Positive Way

• Elevate client satisfaction by impacting high-growth business across US, UK, and Europe. Shape culture, enhance value propositions, and foster business development.

• Nurture employee growth with Wavestone horizon career path, competitive compensation, transparent salary policy, tailored training, and internal mobility.

• Embrace a collective mindset within a barrier-free, collaborative team. Engage in vibrant people culture through regular events, meetings, and committees.

• Experience ethical responsibility with flexible work options, strong CSR commitment, and a culture promoting work-life balance and time-off.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and bonus scheme.

• Income protection insurance, 5% company pension, private health and dental cover, life insurance, company share scheme.

• Additional flexible benefits you can select from such as additional holidays, additional pension contributions, subsidized gym, subscriptions to wellbeing apps, Netflix, retail vouchers.

• 25 days annual leave.

Travel and Location

• Employees are not required to work in a Wavestone office on a full-time basis but are required to commute to the office /client site, whenever necessary. Wavestone UK office is in the heart of the city of London.

• Note: Mandatory 2-3 days per week in Wavestone office / client site during probation.

Diversity and Inclusion

At Wavestone, we celebrate diversity and inclusion. We have a strong global CSR agenda and an active Diversity & Inclusion committee with Gender Equality, LGBTQ+, Disability Inclusion, Social Mobility and Anti-Racism networks.

If you need flexibility, assistance, or an adjustment to our recruitment process due to a disability or impairment, please reach out to us to discuss this.