Umicore Career Page: Solution Architect

About Umicore

Reducing harmful vehicle emissions. Giving new life to used metals. Powering the cars of the future. As a global materials and technology group, we apply our specialist knowledge to offer materials and solutions that are essential to everyday life. We aim to be a clear world leader in materials for clean mobility and recycling and have turned our sustainability approach into an even greater competitive advantage. With ambitions like this, imagine what you could do?

About our Support Functions

The Information Services (IS) department at Umicore is responsible for delivering digital solutions that support the company’s strategic goals. The team is currently undergoing a major transformation, moving from a traditional data warehouse setup per Business Unit, to a data product/domain-driven architecture. In this process, Umicore wants to increase flexibility for local initiatives, building smaller-scale and self-contained data products, each attributed to a specific domain and with a clear business owner, while also aiming for harmonization where possible and valuable

What you will be doing

As a Solution Architect, you will play a key role in driving the use of the new data platform across Umicore’s Business Units (BUs). You will ensure that each BU can adopt and apply the data architecture principles and frameworks defined by the central architecture team, while also adapting them pragmatically to local needs.
In this central role, you will work closely with Solution Architects & Data Engineers in local BU development teams, to help them design, build, and operate data products that comply with Umicore’s data architecture standards. You will act as a bridge between theory and implementation — ensuring that the vision is applied effectively in practice, and that lessons from implementation feed back into continuous improvement of the central framework.

Primary Tasks and Responsibilities

• Act as a point of contact for data development teams in Business Units, adopting the new data platform by building data products
• Translate Umicore’s data architecture vision and standards into practical implementation guidelines and reusable templates
• Support BU development teams in designing and implementing their data products on Databricks, using Python and DBT, ensuring adherence to governance, modeling, and security standards
• Challenge and refine those principles and standards, based on field experience and feedback from BUs
• Guide teams in migrating from legacy (TimeXtender) systems to the new platform
• Identify common patterns, pain points, and opportunities for improvement across BUs

Main location of the position is Brussels, with occasional presence in Hoboken.

Who we are looking for

Technical profile requirements

• 4+ years of experience as a data engineer or solution architect
• Worked on projects in large-scale analytics environments, ideally within manufacturing or similar sector and in a global context
• Strong knowledge of Python, DBT and Databricks, or similar data modeling and transformation frameworks
• Experience with building or designing large projects in PowerBI or an equivalent BI application, as well as custom analytical front-ends (Voila, Dash, Streamlit,…)
• Familiarity with designing data applications using Machine Learning (MLflow, Model Serving on API’s, and/or Generative AI  (agent-based applications, MCP servers,…) technology
• Hands-on experience with data platform migrations and cloud data architectures
• Familiarity with SAP data extraction (BW or alternative), or other enterprise-grade business applications is a strong plus
• Solid understanding of data modeling, data governance, and enterprise security requirements
• Proven ability to turn architecture principles into practical solutions that deliver business value

Non-Technical profile requirements

•  Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, able to collaborate with business and technical teams across multiple domains
• Ability to translate business needs into scalable technical solutions
• Proactive, hands-on, and solution-oriented mindset
• Comfortable working in a complex, multi-stakeholder environment
• Agile mindset, aiming to build to scale but willing to fail fast 

Following Certifications are a big plus:

• Azure Solution Architect Expert
• Databricks Data Engineer Associate
• dbt Analytics Engineering Certification

Language proficiencies

• English: Fluent (spoken and written)
• Dutch and/or French: a plus

What we offer

We aim to lead the way. Not just for our customers, but for our employees too. That is why we strive to create a collaborative environment in which we can all succeed, and a culture through which we can all share ideas, develop our expertise and advance our careers. As you would expect from a world-leading organization, we will also reward your contribution with a competitive salary and benefits. With all this and more, imagine what you could do?

IF OUR PIONEERING APPROACH CAN MAKE US A LEADER IN SUSTAINABILITY, IMAGINE WHAT YOU COULD DO?