Lead Data Architect

Purpose of the Role 

We are looking for a world-class Data Architect to drive the data flows and analysis that powers F1. As a Lead Data Architect, you will be responsible for partnering with systems architects and business users to understand data management and integration requirements, which help the team optimize workflows and feature delivery. You will also partner with software engineers to ensure that data integration, database architectures, and analytics capabilities are world championship material. You will partner with business functions and platform engineering to ensure the highest standards of operational excellence for our data platforms including monitoring, alerting, and problem resolution, and will work closely with engineering teams to optimize data models, queries, flows, and work with McLaren Enterprise IT teams on capacity planning and management. 

Accountabilities and Responsibilities 

• Partner with systems architects and leads to ensure optimized data flows between operational platforms 

• Design and optimise data processing approaches for real-time analysis, enabling quick and effective decision-making. Design and guide the delivery of tools and platforms for advanced data analysis, visualization, and reporting. 

• Deliver a long-term data strategy for McLaren F1, encompassing operational and integrated analytics across all functional domains (including Finance, Production, Machining, People, and Racing), which is applied to product and project delivery 

• Partner with application engineering to ensure the right data management platforms are available, and that data models can meet current and future needs, ensuring optimal performance across relational, NoSQL, streaming, timeseries, and analytics systems. 

• Partner with platform engineering to ensure robust disaster recovery plans and backup systems. Ensure compliance with data protection regulations and best practices to safeguard sensitive information. 

• Work with teams to evaluate application use cases and available technologies, to provide the best data system that will deliver optimal performance and cost efficiency. 

• Provide technical guidance and leadership in data management technologies including relational, document, analytics and data transformation tools, staying abreast of trends and best practices. Mentor and support team members in data-related tasks and projects. 

• Communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders to gather requirements, deliver updates, and translate complex data concepts into actionable insights. 

• Lead data projects, from planning and budgeting to execution and delivery. Ensure projects are completed on time, within scope, and meet the high-quality standards required by the team. 

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience 

Technical 

• Data Architecture: Deep applied understanding of data platform selection and differentiation, including relational, non-relational (streaming, document, graph, timeseries), and analytics (data warehouse, data lake) systems. Ability to partner with less technical business users to understand, document, and optimize data flows between systems. 

• Data Pipeline Design and Implementation: Experienced in designing and implementing data pipelines (ETL/ELT/streaming) for robust data ingestion, transformation, and distribution, ensuring access to reliable data for analysis and decision-making. 

• Relational Databases: Deep understanding of relational database technologies such as SQL Server, MySQL, or Postgres. Ability to create and optimize data models, indexes, stored procedures, access, and scalability. 

• Non-Relational Data Systems: Experience of working with NoSQL, streaming, graph, timeseries, or edge databases including MongoDB, Kafka, JanusGraph, and InfluxDB. Understanding of binary encoding and compression approaches for complex data structure storage and retrieval. 

• Data Strategy: Production experience delivering aligned data models that enable resource isolation and data integration, with experience of Kimball/Inmon modelling and ability to deliver in data mesh architectures across multiple functional domains 

• Data Storage Solutions: Familiarity with data storage with an understanding of on-premises, cloud, and edge deployment models. Ability to work across teams to select the most appropriate solution based on use case and requirements. 

• Security and Compliance: Awareness of data security practices, compliance standards, and regulatory requirements to ensure data privacy and security across all data architecture designs. 

Personal 

• Effective communication, both written and verbal. Excellent presentation skills. Able to explain complex concepts to all levels of the business. Able to navigate difficult conversations professionally. 

• Open mindedness to ensure high flexibility and the capacity to manage and lead others through rapid and profound changes of scopes, development directions and processes.  

• Aptitude to learn from others and highly skilled at sharing your knowledge effectively. Experience with mentoring/coaching others in the team both technically and personally. 

• Flexible approach to working hours and occasional travel. 

These are our core values. They support our vision “To be the most pioneering and exhilarating racing team in the world” and are the things that we believe are most important in the way we live and work within the McLaren Racing family. They should directly inform how we think, how we behave, and how we perform at every level of our team. 

• Brave: We embrace the pressure of performance, setting the highest standards and holding ourselves to them 

• Respectful: We act with integrity and work together to address challenges with respect, openness and honesty 

• Innovative: We strive to be better tomorrow than we are today, and we seek out new ways to drive performance 

• Inclusive: We embrace diversity, in all forms, and empower each person to contribute to team success 

• Energetic: We are racers. We show up every day with energy and enthusiasm, ready to play our part 

All employees must ensure compliance with the Company Health and Safety Policy, and all relevant other statutory Health and Safety legislation. 

This job description may not detail some less major duties allocated to the post holder, nor cover duties of a similar nature, commensurate with the role, which may from time to time be reasonably required by the relevant manager.