Data Platform Lead

You’ve spent 8+ years building and architecting data solutions, and you’ve grown from hands-on delivery into a role people turn to for advice. Architecting cloud data platforms is second nature to you and you’re just as comfortable in front of a customer’s IT director as you are unblocking a colleague’s design question. What will you be doing? As a Data Platform Lead, you’ll be working for our customers in Wallonia and Luxembourg. You’ll focus on:
• Strategic blueprint: you design the data and AI architecture that supports our customers' business goals, and make and substantiate the technology choices that tie it all together into one coherent whole.
• Technical presales & assessments: you join presales conversations as the technical expert, translate customer needs into concrete use cases, and run assessments on customer sites to size up their data landscape.
• Technical leadership: you guide implementations and keep an eye on quality, performance and coherence across what the team delivers.
• Continuous improvement: you spot opportunities to optimize and bring in new ways of working and technology at every stage.
• Sounding board & coach: internally, you're the person colleagues bring their toughest design questions to, helping the team grow. Who are we? From creating the most basic reports to building a data architecture from scratch – you name it, we’ve done it. In the Microsoft Data Team, you’ll join more than 100 data engineers, analysts and scientists, working on innovative projects alongside one another. We love to dive deep into data to help clients get to know their company from the inside out. This makes every project a new learning experience we get to share with each other. And we definitely love to share. Through team meetings, data snack sessions, going to conferences and reporting back on them and discussions (called DataCafés) we keep each other in the loop. As AI takes over more of the repetitive work, our role is shifting too. We see that as an opportunity rather than a threat. Less hands-on-keyboard, more conducting the orchestra of tools and agents around us. That means combining technical depth with a real feel for the business context behind the data. Just so you know: delaware has its offices in Antwerp, Ghent, Kortrijk, Lummen, Liège and Wavre, but we also spend a lot of time working together with our customers on-site. Is there a match? Let’s see. If you…
• have 8+ years of experience, with a track record of growing from delivery into a more architectural or advisory role;
• have good knowledge on architecting cloud data platforms and advanced data modelling concepts, ideally within the Azure data stack;
• are comfortable working across Python, SQL and PySpark;
• possess a customer-facing presence: you put people at ease and come across as a trusted, senior voice in presales conversations and on-site assessments;
• are fluent in French and English; Dutch is a plus given our Belgian customer base;
• are a caring, driven colleague who takes ownership of the team's technical growth as naturally as you do a customer's architecture;
• are willing to travel to our Luxembourg office on a regular basis. …then you may be the Data Platform Lead we’re looking for