Principal Data Solution Architect

Location –Leeds/Dublin/London
Hybrid

Permanent

About the Role

In Flutter COO we work with experts across Flutter to build, deploy and communicate the Flutter Edge. Together we cover Product & Payments, Technology, Sportsbook Product & Trading, People, Property, Corporate Communications and Strategic Partnerships & Transformation.

We are seeking a Principal Data Solution Architect to design and deliver distributed data platforms that power Flutter's applications across Gaming and Sportsbook. This role is focused on execution and solutions delivery – building scalable, high-performance data platforms that enable real-time and batch data processing at scale. The Principal Data Solution Architect will be responsible for architecting distributed data platforms including real-time streaming infrastructure, distributed compute platforms, object storage solutions, and SQL/NoSQL data stores. You will work closely with application teams, Product, and Engineering to design data solutions that serve business-critical applications, ensuring they can efficiently produce, consume, and process data at Flutter's scale. This role is pivotal to supporting Flutter Functions' data strategy through practical, executable solutions. You will need strong convictions about the right technical approaches for distributed systems, whilst being pragmatic and responsive to the immediate needs of application teams and business stakeholders. Data continues to be a strategic asset for Flutter. Our capability to process, stream, and serve data to applications in real-time is increasingly important as we strive to deliver the most compelling experience to our worldwide customer base across Gaming and Sportsbook.

What you’ll do

Drive platform capability improvements - continuously enhance distributed data platforms using knowledge of Spark, Databricks, Kafka, Pulsar, Cassandra, and object stores to maintain best-in-class capabilities
Enable application data consumption - understand how applications produce and consume data, designing solutions that enable efficient data access patterns, real-time streaming, and batch processing for application needs
Architect data streaming solutions - design and implement real-time data streaming architectures using Kafka and Pulsar, ensuring low-latency data delivery to downstream applications and services
Design distributed data structures - work with engineering teams to design effective data structures for distributed systems like Cassandra, optimizing for read/write patterns, scalability, and performance
Deliver cloud-native data solutions - architect and implement data platforms on AWS leveraging cloud native services, Databricks, object stores (S3), and distributed compute frameworks
Provide technical leadership and mentoring - mentor engineers and architects on distributed data platform patterns, helping teams deliver robust solutions and grow their technical capabilities
Develop executable roadmaps - create pragmatic technology roadmaps that deliver near-term business value while progressing toward target state architectures for distributed data platforms
Partner with engineering teams - build strong relationships with engineering teams across Gaming and Sportsbook, understanding their data needs and translating them into scalable platform solutions
Design solutions for projects - deliver ADRs, data models, technical designs, and assessments to support delivery of business goals, working with engineering teams to bring solutions to life
Influence technical strategy - shape the technical direction of data platforms, considering future application requirements and emerging technologies in distributed systems and data streaming
Manage technology risk - identify, communicate, and mitigate technology risks associated with distributed systems, data platform decisions, and system integrations
Ensure operational excellence - design solutions with security, cost optimization, performance, regulatory requirements, and compliance in mind
Contribute to architecture governance - support architecture forums and governance processes, ensuring timely review and alignment across Flutter

What you’ll need:

Distributed data platforms expertise – extensive experience designing and implementing distributed data platforms at scale, with deep understanding of distributed systems principles and trade-offs
Data streaming architecture – proven track record architecting and implementing real-time / low-latency data streaming platforms including patterns for event-driven architectures
OLTP, NoSQL and distributed databases – experience with Cassandra or similar distributed databases, understanding data structures, partitioning strategies, consistency models, and performance optimization, as well as OLTP databases such as PostgreSQL and MySQL
Distributed compute frameworks – strong experience with Apache Spark and distributed data processing, including optimisation, performance tuning, and large-scale batch/streaming workloads
Cloud-native data platforms – demonstrated experience with any Cloud Providers such as AWS, GCP, Azure, including Databricks.
Application-aware data architecture – strong understanding of how applications produce and consume data, designing platforms that serve application needs efficiently across real-time and batch use cases
Large-scale platform delivery – track record of delivering large-scale data platforms for high-volume B2C software businesses, preferably in Gaming, Sportsbook, or similar real-time domains
Data transformation experience – demonstrated experience contributing to data modernisation and migration initiatives and ability to drive a data first approach within the organisation.
Solutions delivery focus – proven ability to execute and deliver practical solutions, working closely with engineering teams to bring architectures to life
ML/AI platform enablement - demonstrated experience productionising data science and ML/AI capabilities through the data lifecycle, including feature stores, training pipelines, model serving patterns, and data platforms that enable ML at scale
Regulatory & compliance experience – designed and implemented compliant data solutions across regulated environments (PCI/SOX/HIPAA), ensuring adherence to industry standards and data protection requirements.

What’s in it for you
We are a flexible employer; whether you have personal commitments or a hobby that brings you joy, we want you to bring your best self to work and feel empowered to do so. We also like to share our success; after all you make it happen. We have an excellent benefits package that can be personalised to you:

Bonus scheme
Uncapped holiday allowance
Enhanced pension scheme
Private healthcare
Life assurance
Income protection
£1,000 annual self-development learning fund
Invest via the Flutters Sharesave Scheme
Enhanced parental leave

About Flutter

We are a world leader in online sports betting and iGaming, with a market leading position in the US and across the world.

We have an unparalleled portfolio of the most innovative, diverse and distinctive brands including FanDuel, Sky Betting & Gaming, Sportsbet, PokerStars, Paddy Power, Sisal, tombola, Betfair, MaxBet, Junglee Games and Adjarabet.

With our global scale and challenger attitude, through which we excite and entertain our customers, in a safe and sustainable way. Using our collective power, the Flutter Edge, we aim to disrupt the sector, learning from the past to create a better future for our customers, colleagues and communities.

We’re working to be an inclusive employer, and we encourage people from all backgrounds, ways of thinking and working to apply. Everyone brings different perspectives and experiences; you don't have to meet all the requirements listed to apply for this role.

If you need any adjustments to make this role work for you let us know, and we’ll see how we can accommodate them.

Principal Data Solution Architect

Benefits

Job Description