Senior Staff Enterprise Architect

Job Description Summary Senior Staff Software Architect to define and drive the data architecture and strategy for our customer-facing digital platform. This is a hands-on architecture role responsible for building a reliable, scalable and high-performance data foundation spanning data ingestion, ETL, relational data stores, search/indexing and the API serving layer. You will shape how data flows from multiple enterprise sources into Amazon RDS/PostgreSQL and Apache Solr, and how that data is efficiently exposed to customer-facing applications.tex Job Description Role & Responsibilities: • Define and drive the long-term data architecture and technology strategy for the platform, design scalable patterns for data ingestion, transformation, ETL and data synchronisation across multiple source systems. • Own the architecture and optimisation strategy for Apache Solr, including indexing, search performance and efficient retrieval of large datasets. • Provide application-level database architecture leadership for Amazon RDS/PostgreSQL, including data modelling, schema design, indexing, query optimisation and database design patterns. • Define how data should move across source systems → ETL → RDS → Solr → APIs → web applications. • Drive adoption of AI-assisted software engineering and AI Development Lifecycle (AI-DLC) practices to improve developer productivity, quality, automation and speed of delivery. • Define and drive the platform's Generative AI and Agentic AI strategy, identifying opportunities to build intelligent capabilities into customer-facing products. • Drive strategies for data quality, integrity, traceability, monitoring, logging and auditing. • Identify performance bottlenecks across database, indexing, search and API layers and lead optimisation initiatives. • Partner closely with Product Owners, Business Analysts, regional stakeholders, architects and engineering teams to translate product needs into scalable technical solutions. • Mentor Tech Leads and senior engineers on database, data integration and search architecture. Technical Exterties: Data & Database Architecture • Deep hands-on experience with PostgreSQL and relational database architecture. • Strong expertise in data modelling, schema design, indexing, query optimisation and database performance tuning. • Experience with Amazon RDS and cloud-based database architectures. • Ability to operate as an Application DBA/Database Architect, helping engineering teams make sound database design and optimisation decisions. Search & Indexing • Strong hands-on expertise with Apache Solr or comparable enterprise search platforms. • Deep understanding of indexing strategies, search architecture, query performance and large-scale data retrieval. • Experience designing architectures that combine relational databases with search/indexing platforms. Data Integration • Strong experience designing ETL/ELT and data integration architectures. • Experience integrating data from multiple enterprise systems and designing reliable data pipelines. • Strong understanding of data synchronisation, transformation, validation and error-handling patterns. Application & Cloud Architecture • Experience designing data services and APIs supporting high-volume customer-facing web applications. • Strong experience with AWS, particularly RDS, S3, Lambda and related data services. • Understanding of Node.js, GraphQL and API architectures and how application design affects database and search performance. • Strong understanding of monitoring, logging, observability, security, reliability, availability, scalability and performance engineering. AI Adoption • Practical knowledge of Generative AI, large language models, AI agents and Agentic AI architectures. • Passion for applying AI to both customer-facing products and the software engineering lifecycle. Education & Experience • Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience. • 15+ years of software engineering/data engineering experience, with significant experience in data architecture and technical leadership. • Proven experience designing data platforms for large-scale customer-facing applications. • Demonstrated ability to influence architecture and engineering practices across multiple teams. • Strong communication skills with the ability to collaborate effectively with both technical teams and product/business stakeholders.