Senior Data Architect

Senior Data Architect
Remote
£650-750 inside IR35
Requires Active SC Clearance

The Role

We are seeking an experienced Senior Data Architect / Database Administrator (DBA) to support the delivery and operation of critical data platforms within a government and defence context. The role requires deep expertise in Amazon RDS and PostgreSQL, with responsibility for ensuring that important database services are secure, resilient, performant, and aligned to organisational and regulatory requirements.

Working as a senior technical specialist, you will provide hands-on leadership across database architecture, design, optimisation, resilience, recovery, and operational support. You will play a key role in enabling secure, reliable, and scalable data services that support business and operational outcomes across complex technology environments.

This position requires close collaboration with enterprise architects, cloud engineers, developers, security teams, and service management functions to ensure solutions are delivered in accordance with technical governance, security standards, and industry best practice.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design, implementation, and continual improvement of PostgreSQL databases hosted on Amazon RDS.
• Define and maintain resilient, secure, and scalable database architectures supporting critical services and operational workloads.
• Oversee database performance tuning, optimisation, capacity planning, and availability management.
• Design and maintain robust backup, recovery, disaster recovery, and business continuity capabilities.
• Provide expert-level operational support, troubleshooting, and root cause analysis for complex database incidents.
• Collaborate with cloud, infrastructure, and development teams to ensure database solutions are effectively integrated into wider platform architectures.
• Contribute to technical governance, architecture reviews, design authorities, and assurance activities.
• Support Infrastructure as Code (IaC) delivery through Terraform and AWS CloudFormation.
• Champion automation and modern engineering practices, including integration with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps delivery models.
• Produce and maintain high-quality technical documentation, architectural designs, operational procedures, and support artefacts.
• Ensure database services are delivered in line with security, audit, compliance, and operational requirements expected within government and defence environments.

Essential Skills and Experience

• Significant experience in a Senior Data Architect, Database Architect, or Senior DBA role.
• Proven expertise administering, designing, and optimising PostgreSQL database platforms.
• Extensive hands-on experience with Amazon RDS, including high availability, backup, recovery, monitoring, and performance management.
• Experience designing and operating resilient cloud-hosted database solutions supporting critical services.
• Strong understanding of database security, resilience, disaster recovery, and operational best practices.
• Experience implementing Infrastructure as Code using Terraform and/or AWS CloudFormation.
• Experience supporting database platforms within modern CI/CD and DevOps environments.
• Proven ability to produce detailed technical and architectural documentation.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to engage effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience working within controlled, highly regulated, or security-conscious environments.

Desirable Skills and Experience

• Experience delivering technology solutions within government, defence, national security, or other regulated sectors.
• Familiarity with security accreditation, assurance, audit, and governance processes.
• Experience supporting secure cloud environments and implementing security-by-design principles.
• Knowledge of broader AWS data and cloud services.
• Relevant AWS, cloud, or database certifications.

To learn more, please do reach out to Jess Walrond at Sanderson Government and Defence at [email protected]

Reasonable Adjustments:

Respect and equality are core values to us. We are proud of the diverse and inclusive community we have built, and we welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and perspectives. Our success is driven by our people, united by the spirit of partnership to deliver the best resourcing solutions for our clients.

If you need any help or adjustments during the recruitment process for any reason, please let us know when you apply or talk to the recruiters directly so we can support you.