Lead Data Lakehouse Architect - AWS S3 Lakehouse

About the role

A highly experienced Lead Data Lakehouse Architect is sought to provide end-to-end architectural leadership for the implementation of an AWS S3 Lakehouse. The role defines and enforces data architecture standards, ensuring scalability, performance and governance across the data ecosystem. It is based in Dubai-Abu Dhabi and is advertised by an employment agency.

Key responsibilities

• Design and enforce Medallion Architecture for the Lakehouse and drive architectural decisions through SAF/ARB architecture forums.
• Lead design for all Data Factory squads working on data initiatives.
• Define Apache Iceberg table standards, including partitioning strategy, schema evolution, time travel and snapshot retention, and table optimization schedules.
• Establish data modeling standards such as dimensional modeling for the Gold layer, SCD2, naming conventions and metadata management, and define lineage standards using OpenMetadata.
• Coordinate with platform teams on Iceberg activities and with Data Quality leads on validation rules; manage escalations and report progress to senior stakeholders.
• Guide Glue Data Engineers, set up code review processes and create reusable design patterns and templates.

Required profile

• Proven experience in Lakehouse architecture (S3, Iceberg, Glue, Spark).
• Leadership ability to run architectural forums and influence decisions.
• Experience defining metadata management, lineage and data quality frameworks.
• Preferred: 10+ years in data architecture, at least 3 in Lakehouse implementations, and experience in financial services or banking.

Required skills

• AWS services: S3, Glue, Athena, EMR.
• Apache Iceberg, Spark, and hands-on schema evolution, partitioning and table optimization.
• OpenMetadata or similar lineage tools; automation of repetitive tasks.
• Jira and agile working methods.