Data Architect

Overview

Your Role In Projects: We are looking for Data Engineers who know how to translate complex data issues into scalable, efficient solutions. You will contribute to designing and implementing modern data platforms on Azure with a strong focus on Lakehouse architectures using Databricks and Microsoft Fabric. You will translate business goals into pragmatic data architectures and help teams deliver scalable, secure, and future‑proof solutions. You will join the Data & AI team in Belgium, working with colleagues from adesso in the Netherlands and across Europe, helping to build a new practice while benefiting from the knowledge and stability of an established international company.

Job Context: adesso Belgium is part of the adesso group, an IT provider with a growth strategy in Europe. The role supports the group’s mission to grow together by attracting talent and enabling growth in customers, industries, and the adessi community in Belgium.

Responsibilities

• Define data architectures & roadmaps: design end‑to‑end data architectures on Azure (ingestion, storage, processing, serving, governance).
• Shape Lakehouse/data platform blueprints using technologies such as Azure Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, Azure Data Lake, Azure Synapse, and Azure Data Factory.
• Translate business objectives and requirements into architectural roadmaps, target architectures, and transition steps.

• Choose and align technologies: evaluate and position Databricks vs Microsoft Fabric vs other Azure components based on client context and use cases.
• Define reference patterns (e.g., medallion architecture, CDC patterns, data sharing, semantic layers) and promote them across projects.
• Collaborate with cloud architects, security, and domain experts to ensure solutions align with enterprise standards and constraints.

• Guide implementation & support teams: work with data engineers, analytics engineers, BI developers and data scientists to realize the architecture; provide guidance on data modeling and data product design.
• Review solution designs, pipelines and models; help troubleshoot complex issues as needed.

• Data governance, security & quality: define and promote governance principles (ownership, cataloguing, lineage, metadata, classification); work with security teams to implement secure‑by‑design architectures; advocate data quality and observability practices.

• Hands‑on architecture & prototyping: stay close to technology by building proofs of concept, reference implementations and accelerators; use tools like Databricks, Fabric Lakehouses, Notebooks, Data Pipelines, Power BI; contribute to internal frameworks and reusable components.

• Community & pre‑sales: contribute to the Data & AI community within adesso (Belgium and Netherlands); support pre‑sales activities, proposals, estimates, client workshops; mentor engineers aspiring to architecture roles.

Required Technical Skills & Knowledge

Azure Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Apache Spark, Azure Synapse, Azure Data Lake, Azure Data Factory, Python, PySpark, SQL

Your profile

You don’t need to tick every box, but you should recognize yourself in most of the following:

Technical & Architectural Skills

• Solid experience designing and implementing data solutions on Azure, with exposure to Databricks and/or Microsoft Fabric.
• Strong understanding of modern data platform and Lakehouse concepts (medallion architecture, Delta/Parquet, OneLake, Lakehouses, semantic models).
• Strong data modeling skills for analytics: dimensional modeling / star schema is a must; data vault or 3NF is a plus.
• Hands‑on background in data engineering (SQL, Python/PySpark, ETL/ELT, orchestration) and comfort with technical details.
• Familiarity with Power BI or similar analytics tools and how architecture impacts reporting, self‑service BI and semantic models.
• Understanding of CI/CD, DevOps and infrastructure‑as‑code practices (Azure DevOps, GitHub, Terraform/Bicep) in the context of data platforms.
• Knowledge of data governance, security and compliance in the cloud (RBAC, DLP, lineage, catalog, audit) and how to embed them into architecture.

Consulting & Soft Skills

• Enjoy working with stakeholders from both business and IT; can challenge and clarify requirements.
• Explain architectural options, trade‑offs and decisions clearly to diverse audiences.
• Facilitate workshops and guide teams through architectural choices.
• Proactive, pragmatic and solution‑oriented: balance good architecture with delivery constraints.
• Fluent in French and/or Dutch and English (written and spoken).
• Current residency and work authorization in Belgium; reloca