Job Description
Position Details
IT Services
Location: University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK
Full time starting salary is normally in the range £57,422 to £66,537 with potential progression once in post to £86,760
Grade: 9
Full Time, Permanent
Closing date: 9th June 2025
Our offer to you
People are at the heart of what we are and do.
The University of Birmingham is proud to have been a part of the City of Birmingham and the wider region for over 100 years, and we are equally proud to be recognised as a leading global university. We want to attract talented people from across the city and beyond, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success.
We are committed to helping the people who work here to develop through our sector-leading Birmingham Professional programme which provides all professional services staff with development opportunities and the encouragement to reach their full potential. With almost 5,000 professional services jobs in a wide-range of functions in Edgbaston and in our campus in Dubai, there are plenty of opportunities for you to be able to develop your career at the University.
We believe there is no such thing as a typical member of staff and that diversity is a source of strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation, and debate. We warmly welcome people from all backgrounds and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is at the heart of who and what we are, and how we work.
Supporting our people to achieve a healthy work/life balance is important both to our employees and to the success of the University and, depending on the role, we offer a variety of flexible working arrangements. We therefore welcome discussions on all forms of flexible working. In addition, you will receive a generous package of benefits including 40 days paid holiday a year, one paid day a year for volunteering, occupational sick pay, and a pension scheme. We also have three high quality subsidised day nurseries.
The University is situated in leafy Edgbaston and there are excellent transport links to our beautiful campus, including main bus routes and a train station on site. On campus we have a state-of-the-art sports centre with pool, shops, places to eat and drink, our own art gallery, museum and botanical gardens.
Find out more about the benefits of working for the University of Birmingham
Background
Over the next decade, our aspiration is to establish Birmingham in the top 50 of the world's leading universities. That is a big aspiration, and high-quality digital services and infrastructure are crucial to achieving it. In recognition of that, our Digital Strategy combined with significant investments in technology mean this is an exciting time to join IT Services,
‘making IT happen’ at the University of Birmingham.
We want to attract outstanding, inspirational, and talented people, support them to succeed, and celebrate their success. It is our role to ensure that our community has access to accessible, responsive, resilient, and secure systems and support. What we do enables our students, staff, researchers, visitors, and partners to confidently and creatively use digital services, technology, and data for the benefit of their learning, teaching, research, or work.
The culture of IT Services is one of innovation, collaboration, excellence, and inclusivity, and we apply the principles of customer focus and continuous improvement to everything we do. We have an active People and Culture network, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and Women in IT group, bi-annual making IT happen awards recognition programme, and a superb Social Committee which arranges regular activities and events.
Role Summary
The University of Birmingham’s digital and data landscape is undergoing major transformation. One of the underpinning elements of our Digital Strategy is to move our on-premise warehousing and reporting to the cloud, investing in new technologies and services. In this role you will play an integral part in supporting the implementation of the Institutional Data Strategy and data informed decision-making by improving the University’s data infrastructure, analytics capabilities, and institutional reporting. If you are looking to develop your experience of supporting impactful change and are passionate about demonstrating the value of data and analytics in driving institutional progress, this is the role for you.
We are seeking an innovative and hands on Data Architect to join our IT Services (ITS) team. This pivotal role is responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining modern data architectures that empower the University's digital transformation goals. The successful candidate will provide strategic leadership and technical expertise to ensure our data infrastructure is scalable, secure, and aligned with institutional objectives.
As a Data Architect, you will work closely with stakeholders across academic, research, and administrative units to deliver solutions that harness the power of data for insight, decision making, and innovation.
Main Duties
Data Architecture Design and Implementation
- Design and build modern, scalable data architectures using cloud based and on premises solutions.
- Develop and maintain data models, databases, and pipelines to support enterprise-wide data initiatives.
- Lead the enterprise expansion of Snowflake for cloud data warehousing and analytics.
- Leverage dbt (Data Build Tool) to enable efficient transformation and management of data pipelines.
- Support and develop data standards, policies, and best practices.
Hands on Development
- Work directly with data engineering and software development teams to build reusable ELT pipelines.
- Create with colleagues APIs and data integrations to enable seamless data access and flow between systems for warehousing and Analytics.
- Optimize the performance and scalability of data systems.
- Utilize Azure Data Factory and other Azure tools for data management and processing.
- Take IT Services ownership of the creation of conceptual and Logical models working with University business leads and SME’s.
Strategic Planning and Leadership
- Work with colleagues across the University to review and drive the University's data strategy, ensuring alignment with institutional goals.
- Collaborate with stakeholders to identify and prioritise data driven opportunities.
- Stay informed and communicate emerging technologies and trends in data architecture and analytics.
Data Governance and Security
- Implement robust data governance frameworks to ensure data quality, integrity, and compliance.
- Collaborate with cybersecurity teams to safeguard sensitive information and mitigate risks.
- Promote best practices for data privacy in line with GDPR and other relevant regulations.
Collaboration and Stakeholder Engagement
- Partner with academics, research teams, and administrative staff to deliver impactful data solutions.
- Provide training and mentorship to cross functional team members on data architecture and tools.
- Act as a subject matter expert for data related projects and initiatives.
General Duties
- Actively manages equality, diversity and inclusion through monitoring and evaluation and actively challenging unacceptable behaviour.
- Supports the University’s sustainability agenda through resource efficient working.
- Any other duties commensurate with the grade.
Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience
- Educated to degree level (or equivalent qualifications) in Computer Science/Information Systems/or another related field plus substantial work experience and/or management/supervisory role in a specialist area, plus a higher degree where appropriate.
- Authoritative and advanced technical expertise in a relevant technical, professional or functional specialism.
- Demonstrable professional development through a series of progressively more demanding and influential work roles.
- Proven experience as a Data Architect, Data Engineer, or similar role in a complex organization.
- Expertise in designing and implementing data architectures in cloud environments (e.g., Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud).
- Hands on experience with Snowflake, dbt, and Azure Data Services (e.g., Data Factory, Synapse, or similar).
- Experience with ETL/ELT tools, APIs, and integration platforms.
- Deep knowledge of data modelling, warehousing, and real time analytics.
- Familiarity with big data technologies principals (e.g., Spark, Hadoop) and BI tools (e.g., Power BI, Tableau).
- Strong programming skills (e.g. SQL, Python, Java, or similar languages).
- Ability to exercise a substantial degree of independent professional responsibility and discretion, and apply an expert understanding of their specialist to the needs of the University.
- Evidence of literacy and numeracy.
- Strong problem-solving skills and a solution-oriented mindset.
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
- Ability to work collaboratively across diverse teams and functions.
- Passion for enabling data driven decision making and innovation.
- Experience of championing Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in own work area.
- Ability to monitor and evaluate the extent to which equality and diversity legislation, policies, procedures are applied.
- Ability to identify issues with the potential to impact on protected groups and take appropriate action.
Desirable Skills
- Experience in higher education or research environments.
- Knowledge of machine learning and AI driven analytics.
- Certifications in cloud platforms (e.g., AWS Certified Data Analytics, Azure Data Engineer Associate.
Informal enquiries to Julian Kobylarz, email:
[email protected]View our staff values and behaviours here
We believe there is no such thing as a 'typical' member of University of Birmingham staff and that diversity in its many forms is a strength that underpins the exchange of ideas, innovation and debate at the heart of University life. We are committed to proactively addressing the barriers experienced by some groups in our community and are proud to hold Athena SWAN, Race Equality Charter and Disability Confident accreditations. We have an Equality Diversity and Inclusion Centre that focuses on continuously improving the University as a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone has the opportunity to succeed. We are also committed to sustainability, which is a key part of our strategy.
You can find out more about our work to create a fairer university for everyone on our website . 
