Snowflake Lead Architect

NEW CONTRACT ROLE – SNOWFLAKE LEAD ARCHITECTA new contract opportunity has just landed for an experienced Snowflake Lead Architect to play a key role in the design, governance and strategic development of an enterprise Snowflake platform.This is not a role for a Data Engineer who simply uses Snowflake as part of their day-to-day delivery. We are looking for someone with genuine Snowflake platform architecture experience who has helped organisations design, build and establish their Snowflake environment from a platform, governance and operating model perspective.You will lead the assessment and evolution of an existing Snowflake estate, defining best practices around architecture, security, governance, automation, cost management and platform operations.Location: Plymouth or Bristol, with regular customer site visits and occasional travel to Exeter as requiredRate: Up to £750 per dayContract: Initial contract with potential extensionClearance: Active SC required or eligible to obtain SCStart: ASAPKey requirements:• Proven experience designing, implementing and optimising enterprise-scale Snowflake platforms• Genuine Snowflake platform architecture experience, including helping to establish or transform a Snowflake capability within an organisation• Experience assessing the maturity of an existing Snowflake estate and defining target architecture and operating models• Strong experience with Snowflake security, governance and access control• Experience designing and implementing RBAC models and access control frameworks• Strong knowledge of data governance, tagging strategies and compliance• Experience with resource monitoring, observability, alerting and platform operations• Strong understanding of Snowflake cost optimisation and FinOps practices• Hands-on experience with Terraform and Infrastructure as Code• Experience automating Snowflake account and environment provisioning, configuration and data onboarding• Experience driving standardisation, automation and best practice across enterprise data platforms• Strong understanding of CI/CD and platform engineering principles• Experience with cloud data platforms, ideally AWS and/or Azure• Ability to work closely with technical architects, development teams and senior stakeholders• Experience providing technical leadership and helping to establish or develop a dedicated platform capabilityWe are particularly interested in candidates who can demonstrate that they have:• Led or significantly contributed to a company-wide Snowflake implementation or platform setup• Designed the underlying Snowflake architecture rather than simply developing pipelines or consuming an existing platform• Defined governance, security and operational standards for Snowflake• Delivered RBAC redesigns, platform maturity assessments or governance transformation programmes• Built scalable Terraform-based automation for Snowflake environments• Supported enterprise-wide Snowflake deployments across multiple teams or business unitsSnowflake certification or accreditation is highly desirable.Due to the nature of the work, candidates will need to meet the relevant UK security clearance requirements.This is an excellent opportunity for a genuine Snowflake Platform Architect to take ownership of a strategically important data platform and help shape its future architecture, governance and operating model.If you are interested, or know someone who could be a good fit, please get in touch.#Snowflake #SnowflakeArchitect #DataArchitecture #DataPlatform #PlatformEngineering #Terraform #InfrastructureAsCode #DataGovernance #FinOps #CloudArchitecture #AWS #Azure #SecurityCleared #SC #ContractJobs