Head of Data Architecture

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General

Job Title: Head of Data Architecture

Reports To: Head of Enterprise Architecture

Key Relationships: IT and Data Management, Data Science, Actuarial, Business Analysts, Platform Leads, Product Owners, Business Stakeholders

Job Summary:

Beazley's data reflects the complexity of our business, and our data architecture is in need of modernisation and rationalisation. We seek a talented head of data architecture to lead in this space as we modernise. You must be a passionate data expert, able to excite and influence stakeholders to meet our common goals, and shape and lead a small team of expert data architects and collaborate with other adjacent functions such as our CDO team. This role is essential to our transformation into a digital company in order to meet our ambitious growth plans.

Key Responsibilities:

The successful candidate will be responsible for:

• Manage and lead our data architecture team, ensuring they have the right skills and capabilities to meet our needs.
• Lead the data architecture team to ratify and shape our target data state, using our current view of our target as a baseline.
• Defining transition states in support of ongoing change that are steps towards that target.
• Implementing and evolving the underlying architecture based on data mesh, data medallion and event streaming.
• Working with business data architects and others to ensure our architecture enables data product delivery and sustainability.
• Collaborating with our wider architecture community to map our data architecture into our enterprise architecture.
• Strengthening and implementing technical data standards and ensuring Beazley and our delivery partners adhere to them
• Ensuring the data architecture team meets our ongoing value delivery and rationalisation objectives across our traditional relational database estate as well as our emerging target state
• Taking on specific data architecture challenges, allocating them within the team (including you), and working them through solution design and ensuring implementation meets our standards
• Acting as a trusted consultant across our business as we explore, investigate and troubleshoot data opportunities and issues.

General

At Beazley we are committed to doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do. It is important that within all your interactions both internally and externally you adhere to this principle through adoption of Beazley's core values and behaviours.

• Adopt the Beazley culture of being bold, striving for better and do the right thing. This contributes to an internal environment of teamwork and promotes a positive brand image and experience to all our external customers.
• Comply with Beazley procedures, policies and regulations including the code of conduct which incorporates the PRA and FCA Conduct Rules. Undertake training on Beazley policies and procedures as delivered by your line manager, Talent Management or assurance teams (compliance, risk, internal audit) either directly, via e-learning or the learning management system.
• Display business ethics that uphold the interests of all our customers.
• Ensure all interactions with customers are focused on delivering a fair outcome, including having the right products for their needs.
• Comply with any specific responsibilities necessary for your role as outlined by your line manager, Talent Management or assurance teams (compliance, risk, internal audit) and ensure you keep up to date with developments in these areas. This may include, amongst others, Beazley's underwriting control standards, Beazley's claims control standards, other Beazley standards and customer relationship management.
• Carry out additional responsibilities as individually notified, either through your objectives or through the learning management system. These may

include membership of any Beazley committees or working groups.

Personal Specification:

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in data relevant area such as STEM, finance, economics or a related field of study desirable but not essential

Knowledge & Experience:

• Experience managing small teams of experts highly desirable.
• Extensive knowledge of and experience with RDBMS architectures, including full command of SQL and ETL languages and tools.
• Understanding of basic data concepts such as ACID, BASE and the ability to determine the best fit to a business problem.
• Ability to synthesise complex data problems into logical models and physical solutions.
• Knowledge of and experience with Event Streaming architectures desirable.
• Hands on experience and demonstrable thought leadership on our specific technology stack highly desirable:
  • Kafka (Confluent)
  • ADLS
  • Snowflake
  • Power BI / Fabric
  • SQL Server
  • Azure PostgresSQL (and other similar Azure options)
  • Integration of the above in a zero trust hybrid cloud architecture
• Knowledge of business re-engineering principles and processes.
• Strong modelling capability with the ability to clearly represent complex ideas graphically.
• Familiar with a variety of modelling approaches, tools and model repositories.
• Ability to translate complex domain specific concepts into knowledge that can be understood and consumed across domains.

Competencies:

• Highly supportive of the business and of its ideals and strategies,
• Neutral toward technology, vendor and product choices; more interested in results than in personal preferences,
• Ability to work with projects and change initiatives to deliver their goals without compromising the delivery of wider strategy,
• Effective at driving short-term actions that are consistent with long-term goals,
• Is motivated by long-term results
• Stakeholder management, understanding of needs, and influencing
• Collaboration skills to drive towards common goals across multiple line management chains,
• Exceptional interpersonal skills, including teamwork, facilitation and negotiation,
• Excellent problem solving and analytical skills,
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills