About the role

The Data and AI Architect Principal is central to BT International's ability to compete in an increasingly data- and AI-driven market. The role owns the architectural vision for data platforms and AI capabilities that directly affect business intelligence, operational efficiency and product innovation. The architect ensures that data and AI architectural decisions drive business value and enable product velocity. The position leads data platform modernisation, establishes MLOps practices and collaborates with senior stakeholders. By aligning data and AI architecture with business imperatives and Group strategy, the role helps BT International remain competitive, agile and customer-focused in a rapidly evolving global landscape.

What you’ll be doing

• Define and lead the data and AI platform architecture strategy, establishing patterns that balance functional requirements with scalability, data quality, privacy and cost optimisation.
• Work closely with product engineering squads to establish data-generation patterns and build data-informed products and AI capabilities.
• Set the architectural strategy for making data available across the organisation through self-service data products, APIs and governed access patterns.
• Lead the technical vision for AI capabilities, distinguishing between machine learning for pattern recognition and agentic AI for autonomous task execution, and establish platform foundations for both.
• Champion data mesh principles where appropriate, enabling domain teams to own their data as products while maintaining consistency through federated governance.
• Establish MLOps practices and platforms that allow product teams to train, deploy and monitor machine learning models with the same velocity as application code.
• Collaborate with IT Systems and NaaS architects to ensure telemetry, network data and business systems generate high-quality data with appropriate lineage and governance.
• Work across multi-vendor environments, including cloud data platforms, on-premises data systems and SaaS analytics tools, to establish a cohesive data architecture.
• Drive architectural governance for data and AI work, ensuring solutions follow platform patterns for data quality, model governance and AI safety.
• Provide technical thought leadership on emerging data and AI technologies, evaluating their applicability and translating possibilities into roadmaps aligned with BT International's platform strategy.
• Mentor architects and engineers, fostering architectural thinking and technical leadership across the architecture and product engineering organisations.

Essential Skills / Experience

• Strategic architecture leadership - Proven ability to define a data and AI platform vision, with a track record of driving large-scale data transformation programmes.
• Data platform architecture - Deep expertise in modern data platform design, including data lakes, data warehouses, streaming architectures and data mesh patterns.
• AI and ML architecture - Strong understanding of machine learning systems, including feature engineering, model training, serving, monitoring and MLOps platforms.
• Technical depth - Hands-on coding capability in data languages such as Python, SQL and Spark, enabling credibility with engineering teams and active participation in data work.
• Data engineering patterns - Strong understanding of ETL and ELT patterns, data quality frameworks, schema evolution and data lineage tracking.
• Cloud-native data - Experience with cloud data services and platforms across multi-vendor environments, including data warehouses, data lakes and ML platforms.
• Platform engineering mindset - Ability to treat data and AI capabilities as platform products with clear service contracts and a strong developer-experience focus.
• Engineering background - Hands-on experience in data engineering or ML engineering, demonstrated through active contribution to data platforms and AI implementations.
• Enterprise-scale platforms - Extensive experience designing and building data platforms in large enterprise or telecommunications environments, including data ingestion, processing and analytics at scale.
• Production AI and ML - Proven track record of implementing AI and ML capabilities in production, including MLOps practices, model-serving infrastructure and support for data-science team autonomy.
• Product engineering collaboration - Significant experience working closely with product engineering teams to establish data-generation and consumption patterns.
• Modern data stack - Strong background in modern data-stack technologies, including cloud data warehouses, data-processing frameworks and ML platforms.
• Governance and compliance - Experience with data governance, privacy and regulatory compliance, balancing data accessibility with security requirements.
• Technology evaluation - Demonstrated success in evaluating emerging AI technologies and translating technical possibilities into practical implementations.
• Agentic AI - Emerging expertise in agentic AI systems, including LLM-based agents, tool use and reasoning frameworks for autonomous task execution.

Our Package

Tailored benefits make a real difference. That’s why we offer a comprehensive range to support your growth, wellbeing, and everyday life. You can design the package to suit you and your lifestyle. Your core benefits include: 

• Company car scheme (or cash alternative) 
• 15% on target annual bonus 
• Private healthcare for you and your family 
• Access to an online private GP 24/7 for you and your immediate family  
• Market-leading paid carers leave with up to 2 weeks off  
• Equalised maternity, paternity, and adoption leave – 18 weeks’ full pay and 8 weeks’ half pay 
• Discounted EE and BT products, including mobile and broadband 
• Market leading Pension scheme – 5% from you and 10% from us 
• Holiday purchase scheme 

You can select additional benefits, including healthcare, dental, gym memberships and more when you’re ready.