Save the Children International has an exciting opportunity for a Senior Lead, DWH & BI Architect to join our global team.
Team and Role Purpose
Purpose of the team is to lead on the strategic planning, design and delivery of digital and data technology solutions used across SCA. The team will be key to defining the Technology strategy including roadmaps for product developments, ensuring our systems remain fit for purpose, maximising the value they deliver and enabling our organisation to achieve impact for children. Working in partnership with Transformation Delivery, the team will be accountable for planning, design and delivery of digital and data technology solutions to Transformation Delivery projects, SCI Functions and internal IT functions.
Role purpose
This role will be responsible for the architecture, design, development and enhancement of Data warehouse, Analytics & Business Intelligence (BI) solutions within the organisation, with varied leading-edge technologies. This role will partner with business stakeholders to understand their requirements and ensure effective delivery of analytical capabilities to meet their needs, utilising best practices and state of the art technologies.
The role holder will contribute to the definition of Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence and Data Analytics strategy & roadmap for SCI, leading measurable improvements in providing the stakeholders with timely and accurate information in order to effectively implement our strategy
- Job Title: Senior Lead, DWH & BI Architect
- Reports To: Head of Business Intelligence and Integration Solutions
- Work Pattern:Hybrid/Remote with flexible working options available
- Location: Any approved Save the Children International office location. For a full list of locations that Save the Children International can hire in, please visit: SCI Careers
- Required Time Zone: Europe, WCA, ESA, MENAEE Time Zones (UTC/GMT + / - 3 hours)
- Contract Length: Permanent
- Right to Work: The successful candidate must have the right to work in the country where the role is based, for the duration of employment.
- Language Requirements: English
- Remit: Global
Principal Accountabilities
- Architect and design data warehouse, analytics and reporting solutions that meet business needs, ensuring implementations follow established architectural principles and are extensible and scalable for future needs. Own the data models that underpin these solutions: logical and physical warehouse models, conformed dimensions and the semantic/reporting layer, selecting the appropriate modelling approach for each use case and ensuring core business entities and measures are defined once and reused consistently. Contribute technical input, options and feasibility analysis to inform the DWH/BI strategy and roadmap.
- Create and maintain architectural and design artefacts so that up-to-date documentation for the relevant programmes and projects is readily available, and ensure knowledge is disseminated across technical and business teams. Ensure deliverables are subject to the required governance and approvals, with appropriate version control and availability.
- Engage business stakeholders across member and country offices to understand analytical needs, agree priorities and build shared understanding of the target architecture, translating and negotiating non-technical requirements into detailed technical specifications.
- Support feasibility studies, planning and estimation for transformation projects and initiatives. Ensure total cost of ownership is fully understood, including support costs, and that there is a clear view of the costs of wider rollout across the movement.
- Provide technical mentorship and design guidance to developers, analysts and designers, applying tried-and-tested patterns and industry best practice. Provide technical estimates for project tasks and proactively surface technical risks and issues for prioritisation. Recommend, schedule and perform improvements and upgrades to existing solutions.
- Provide architectural input to the evaluation and oversight of technology suppliers and implementation partners, assessing platform and product options, reviewing partner designs against agreed architecture and standards, and informing procurement decisions.
- Proactively identify new and innovative solutions that deliver clear business value and build proofs of concept to demonstrate them.
- Partner with the Data Governance function to ensure data warehouse and BI solutions align with the enterprise data model and the organisation's common (canonical) data model, translating conceptual and logical enterprise models into the physical structures that underpin the warehouse and semantic layer, ensuring consistent definition of core business entities, conformed dimensions and shared measures across domains, maintaining traceability between business definitions and physical objects, and feeding design decisions, gaps and pragmatic trade-offs back into data governance strategy, approach and roadmap.
- Ensure solutions are designed and operated in line with regulatory requirements, data protection obligations and charity policies, with particular care for the sensitivity of programme and beneficiary data.
Experience and Skills
Essential
- Proven experience designing, building and deploying data warehouse, data platform, analytics and BI solutions in large, complex organizations, with deep practical knowledge of data warehouse and modern data platform reference architectures.
- Strong grounding in data modelling, relational, dimensional and class modelling, together with semantic layer design and the ability to build governed, reusable datasets that non-technical users can confidently self-serve from.
- Strong knowledge of data transformation and common ETL/ELT patterns and strategies.
- Experience with cloud-based data platform delivery: data ingestion and orchestration, distributed/large-scale storage and compute, lakehouse or warehouse platforms, streaming and real-time data, and enabling analytics and machine learning workloads. Comparable experience on any major cloud platform is welcome, the priority is command of the underlying concepts and patterns rather than any single vendor's toolset.
- Working knowledge of data governance, data quality, security and access control (including row-level security), cost management and platform performance tuning.
- Experience shaping large reporting and analytics programmes: target architecture, roadmap and delivery sequencing, and the ability to convert strategic priorities into operational plans.
- Experience acting as the lead technical authority on data platform and BI initiatives: setting design standards and patterns, reviewing others' technical work, and guiding developers to deliver against an agreed architecture without direct line management responsibility.
- Ability to build credibility and influence across teams, mentoring colleagues and bringing them with you on technical direction without relying on formal authority.
- Experience working closely with non-technical colleagues, translating and negotiating business requirements into detailed technical specifications and high-quality requirements or user stories where needed.
- Good interpersonal and communication skills in written and spoken English, with a proven ability to present credibly to both technical and non-technical audiences; cultural awareness and experience of delivering solutions internationally; and a strong work ethic, taking initiative and ownership to deliver business value.
Desirable
- Hands-on experience with Microsoft Fabric (One Lake, Lakehouse/Warehouse, Data Factory pipelines, Power BI Direct Lake), or a track record of moving a platform towards it.
- Experience with the wider Microsoft data and analytics stack (Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Databricks, Azure Data Factory, Azure Data Lake, Azure Analysis Services, SQL Server, Power BI), or with equivalent tooling on other platforms such as Databricks, Snowflake, dbt or AWS/GCP analytics services.
- Experience working on enterprise or business architecture strategies, roadmaps, capability models and frameworks.
- Experience of agile project delivery.
- Experience of working in a global team with offshore project team members, delivering across multiple time zones.
Education and Qualifications
Essential
- Computing degree - BSc, BA or equivalent experience;
Desirable
- Microsoft Certified (e.g. MCSD)
- TOGAF or other Enterprise/ Business/ Solution Architecture certifications.
Working at Save the Children International
Save the Children is the world's leading organisation for children, employing ~25,000 staff. We save children's lives. We fight for their rights. We help them fulfil their potential. Through our work in 116 countries, we put the most deprived and marginalised children first.
We know that great people make a great organisation, and that our employees play a crucial role in helping us achieve our ambitions for children. We value our people and offer a meaningful and rewarding career, along with a collaborative and inclusive environment where ambition, creativity, and integrity are highly valued.
The work here is challenging but is also immensely rewarding. At Save the Children, you will be in good company, working with talented, like-minded individuals who are determined to ensure that all children survive, learn, and are protected. Your contribution will help ensure children's voices are heard at the highest levels, and that we achieve our global strategy, Ambition for Children 2030, and reach every last child.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Equal Opportunities
DEI is core to our vision, values and global strategy. Save the Children is committed to creating a truly diverse, equitable and inclusive organisation, and one which will support us in our vision to ensure every child attains the right to survival, protection, development, and participation.
We are committed to equal employment opportunities, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, colour, ethnic origin, nationality, disability, marital or civil partnership status, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, caring or parental responsibilities, age, or beliefs and religion. We are committed to diversifying our staff to better represent the communities we serve and actively welcome underrepresented groups to apply.
Reasonable adjustments will be made should any candidate invited to interview require this.
Application Information
Please attach a copy of your CV and cover letter with your application. A full copy of the role profile can be found at SCI Careers. It is recommended that you save a copy of the role profile as it will no longer be available after the advert closes.
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis and the job advert may be closed earlier than advertised subject to the volume of suitable applicants. Please submit your application at your earliest convenience to avoid disappointment.
Due to the high volume of applications we receive, only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. Candidates who are successfully shortlisted should expect to hear from us within 2 weeks of the advert deadline.
Our Recruitment Process
- Application review by our recruiting team based on your CV and cover letter
- Two-stage competency-based interviews with the hiring team
- Some recruitment may include an additional assessment or case study stage, or a third stage interview
- If successful, you will receive a conditional offer of employment, followed by your contract subject to passing background checks
We need to keep children and adults safe so our selection process includes rigorous background checks and reflects our commitment to the protection of children and adults from abuse. All employees are expected to carry out their duties in accordance with our Code of Conduct and all policies and procedures relating to Anti-Harassment, Health and Safety, Safeguarding, and DEI and Equal Opportunities.
Save the Children does not charge a fee at any stage of the recruitment process.
