Director of Technology (Data Platforms)

Join Simple Machines, a leading consultancy in data platform engineering. As the Director of Data Platform Engineering, you will play a key role in shaping the future direction of our data platform capability across the UK and Europe. You will advise enterprise clients on modern data platform strategy, architecture, and AI readiness, and lead architecture and technical direction for complex enterprise data platform and transformation programs. This is a strategic and hands-on leadership role that requires a strong understanding of platform architecture, distributed data systems, and modern engineering practices.

• Defining and evolving Simple Machines’ data platform propositions, technical direction, and strategic positioning.
• Advising enterprise clients on modern data platform strategy, architecture, operating models, and AI readiness.
• Leading architecture and technical direction for complex enterprise data platform and transformation programs.
• We are looking for a leader who understands where enterprise data platforms are heading over the next five years, not where they were five years ago
• The role requires someone equally comfortable operating at executive, architectural, commercial, and delivery levels
• Strong understanding of platform architecture, distributed data systems, orchestration, governance, and scalable data product design
• Strong pre-sales, proposal development, and solution shaping capability
• Demonstrated experience architecting and delivering modern cloud-native data platforms at enterprise scale
• Experience leading major enterprise initiatives and high-performing engineering teams
• Familiarity with contemporary data stack technologies and modern engineering practices
• Deep understanding of data mesh principles, federated governance, and scalable domain-oriented data ownership models
• Proven consultancy and enterprise client-facing experience
• Strong commercial acumen and ability to engage credibly with senior technical and business stakeholders
• Experience with technologies and ecosystems such as GCP, AWS, Azure, Databricks, Snowflake, Kafka, Spark, dbt, Kubernetes, Airflow, ML/AI enablement, or similar modern platform tooling
• Comfortable operating in a fast-moving, high-performance consultancy environment
• Strong understanding of real-time and event-driven architectures, including streaming data systems and low-latency processing patterns
• Experience designing platforms and architectures to support AI-native use cases, machine learning systems, agentic workflows, and intelligent software platforms
• Experience building platforms that support governed, discoverable, reusable, and operationalised data products across large organisations
• 10+ years’ experience across data engineering, data platforms, analytics engineering, or data architecture
• Strong experience developing solutions centred around data products and reusable enterprise data capabilities
• We are looking for someone who combines strong technical depth with commercial and strategic capability. This is not purely a delivery management role, nor is it purely architectural. The ideal person will have a strong point of view on the future of enterprise data platforms, modern data operating models, and the convergence of data engineering and AI enablement
• They should be comfortable moving between executive conversations, whiteboarding architecture, shaping proposals, mentoring teams, and helping clients navigate complex transformation programs