Data Platform Solution Architect - M&G plc.

At M&G, our purpose is to give everyone real confidence to put their money to work. With a heritage dating back more than 175 years, we have a long history of innovation in savings and investments, combining asset management and insurance expertise to offer a wide range of solutions.

Our two distinct operating segments, Asset Management and Life, work together to provide access to balanced, long-term investment and savings solutions.

Through telling it like it is, owning it now and moving it forward together with care and integrity; we are creating an exceptional place to work for exceptional talent.

We will consider flexible working arrangements for any of our roles and offer workplace adjustments to ensure you have the support you need to succeed in your role. Job Description The Data Platform Solution Architect plays a key role in enabling trusted, governed and resilient data products that support reporting, MI, analytics and operational use cases. The role translates business outcomes into practical, scalable solution designs and ensures alignment with enterprise standards, architectural principles and control expectations. It focuses on shaping design options, defining target-state patterns and providing design assurance throughout delivery to reduce risk and accelerate time-to-value. The role works closely with Product Owners, Engineers, Security, Architecture and business stakeholders to support consistent, high-quality delivery across teams. Main Responsibilities

Produce end-to-end solution designs covering ingestion, transformation, storage, semantic layers and consumption patterns across BI/MI, analytics and operational integration needs.

Translate business outcomes into clear data product definitions, including scope, SLAs, controls, non-functional requirements and acceptance criteria.

Embed data governance, data security and privacy controls into solution designs from inception.

Provide design assurance through delivery by running walkthroughs, advising squads and ensuring design decisions are applied consistently.

Develop, maintain and contribute to reference architectures, reusable patterns, templates and design documentation.

Define integration approaches across APIs, events and file-based interfaces, ensuring quality checks, reconciliation and control evidence are incorporated appropriately.

Support governance forums such as Data Design Forum, Technical Design Authority, by providing architecture/design reviews and release governance, ensuring design readiness and proactively surfacing risks and issues.

Partner with Enterprise Architecture and platform leadership to ensure designs align to enterprise strategy, principles, roadmaps and operating models.

Coach engineers and analysts on good design practice, documentation quality and effective stakeholder communication.

Key Knowledge, Skills and Experience

Strong experience designing modern data platforms using Lakehouse and warehouse patterns across batch and streaming use cases.

Deep understanding of cloud-based data services (e.g., Azure, AWS, GCP) and big-data technologies such as Snowflake, Databricks and Fabric.

Strong data-modelling capability across conceptual, logical and physical designs, including semantic modelling for MI/BI.

Knowledge of key governance areas including data ownership, lineage, metadata, access control and quality frameworks.

Strong non-functional design skills including resilience, scalability, performance, cost-optimisation, observability and operability.

Strong communication skills - Ability to explain complex concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, supporting balanced and informed decision-making.

Delivery-focused mindset with the ability to balance strategic architecture with pragmatic, incremental delivery.

Desirable - Experience delivering solutions in highly regulated, financial services environments.

What we offer

We're dedicated to supporting your wellbeing and helping you thrive, both at work and beyond. Our benefits are designed to help you balance your professional and personal life , and financially plan for the future. Our UK benefits include:

A valuable pension scheme of up to 18% (13% made up of employer contributions and 5% employee contributions).

Access to our Share Save and Share Incentive Plan, alongside financial wellbeing and support services to help give you real confidence to put your money to work.

Enjoy 38 days annual leave (including bank holidays), with the opportunity to purchase up to five extra days. Our Time Off When You Need It policy gives you the flexibility - to balance work and personal commitments.

Our market-leading Inspiring Families policy includes comprehensive support and paid parental leave covering maternity, adoption, surrogacy, and paternity leave - because supporting families is an important part of our inclusive culture.

Health & Protection cover includes Private Healthcare, Critical Illness cover and Life Assurance for you, with additional family options - for peace of mind.

To explore more about life at M&G and our full benefits offering, visit Life at M&G

At M&G we strive to have a diverse workforce and an inclusive culture, underpinned by our policies and employee-led networks that offer networking, support and development opportunities for the diverse communities our colleagues represent. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds - across gender, ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation and more - including neurodivergent individuals, career returners and those with military service experience.

M&G is proud to be Level 3: Disability Confident Leader under the UK Government Disability Confident employer scheme, and we welcome applications from candidates with disabilities and long-term health conditions. If you would like to participate in the initiative, you will have the opportunity to indicate this on your application.

We are committed to providing an inclusive recruitment process. All candidates have the opportunity to request reasonable adjustments when applying. If you need any additional support at any stage, please contact us at: