Senior Data Architect

Join Musgrave - Empowering Communities, Innovating the Future

Musgrave is one of Europe's most successful family owned businesses, with a rich 150 year legacy in food and brand innovation. We're proud to serve communities across Ireland and Spain, feeding one in three people every day through 19 iconic brands like SuperValu, Centra, Mace, Frank and Honest, and Musgrave MarketPlace. By supporting thousands of retail and foodservice family businesses, we make a positive impact on the communities they serve. We're committed to becoming the most trusted and sustainable business in Ireland, and we're looking for dynamic, forward thinking individuals to join us on this journey.

As part of continued investment in modern data and digital capabilities, Musgrave is building a cloud based, enterprise scale data platform to support operational, analytical and future AI driven use cases.

We are seeking a Data Architect to define and own the data architecture, standards and design patterns that underpin this platform.

Reporting to the Head of IT, Data & Analytics, the role is responsible for establishing coherent, scalable and future proof data architecture, ensuring all data solutions are aligned to enterprise standards and support long term business and technology objectives.

The role operates at the intersection of business strategy and technical design, translating data requirements into clear architectural direction and guardrails that enable consistent, high quality delivery.

Work location is flexible in the republic of Ireland. We have offices in Cork and Dublin. Work Smart hybrid work arrangement applies for this role. Some travel to Cork will be required.

What you'll be doing

• Define and own the data architecture strategy, standards and design principles across the data platform.
• Establish reusable architecture patterns for ingestion, transformation, modelling, storage and access.
• Ensure all data solutions align to agreed architectural standards, governance frameworks and data strategy.
• Lead the design of scalable and maintainable data models and data pipelines, supporting both operational and analytical use cases.
• Work closely with business stakeholders to translate requirements into high level solution designs and architectural blueprints.
• Provide technical leadership and guidance to data engineering, platform and delivery teams.
• Evaluate and guide the adoption of modern data technologies, tools and integration patterns.
• Ensure architecture supports performance, scalability, security, governance and cost efficiency.
• Drive standardisation and reduce fragmentation across the data landscape.
• Act as a technical authority, reviewing and assuring solution designs across programmes and initiatives.

Success in the role will be demonstrated through

• The delivery of coherent, scalable architecture.
• Widespread reuse of design patterns.
• Strong alignment between business needs and technical solutions.

What we're looking for

• 5 7 years' experience defining and delivering data architecture in complex enterprise environments.
• Strong background in data platforms, data modelling and distributed data systems.
• Proven ability to design scalable, cloud based data architectures, ideally in Azure environments.
• Experience architecting solutions across data ingestion, transformation, storage and consumption layers.
• Good understanding of modern data technologies (e.g., data lakes, lakehouse, cloud data platforms).
• Strong knowledge of data governance, data quality, security and regulatory considerations.
• Experience defining and enforcing architecture standards and reusable patterns.
• Ability to translate business requirements into clear architectural designs and technical direction.
• Strong stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to influence at senior technical and business levels.
• A strategic mindset, with the ability to balance long term architecture integrity with pragmatic delivery needs.
• Experience with modern cloud data platforms such as Azure Data Services, Databricks or Microsoft Fabric.
• Familiarity with modern data integration patterns (batch, micro batch, streaming, APIs).
• Experience operating in federated or multi team data environments.
• Strong architectural thinking and structured problem solving.
• Ability to define and communicate clear technology direction and standards.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills across technical and non technical stakeholders.
• Ability to mentor and guide engineering teams without direct line management.
• Focus on simplicity, scalability and long term maintainability.

Qualifications

Third level qualification in IT, Computer Science, Engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience. Relevant architecture or cloud certifications are desirable.

Musgrave is an equal opportunities employer. We encourage applications from diverse candidates. If we can make any accommodations to enable you to be the best version of yourself during the interview, please let us know.