Costa has ambitious growth plans, with a vision to become the Worlds Most Loved Coffee company.  To support our Total Coffee growth we are seeking a Azure Data Platform Architect to join the team and play a lead role in developing and designing the global digital strategy for Costa enabling us to deliver best in class digital experiences for our customers.

A bit about us...

At the heart of Costa Coffee are our values; we believe in Passion, Warmth, Trust and Courage. We are the No 1 coffee brand in the UK and as part of the Coca-Cola Company, we’re on a journey to be the worlds most loved coffee brand, we don’t settle for mediocre. We’ve come a long way from the Costa brothers first roastery in 1971, today we are a total coffee company that delivers great coffee to our consumers all over the globe. Along with our much-loved stores, this includes our Express machines, Ready to Drink range, and a long list of friends and partnerships. Costa are proud of our collaborative and inclusive workforce, who continually unlock new growth potential.

A bit about the role...

Costa’s Data Platform is a state-of-the-art Azure Synapse Cloud and AI solution at the heart of our global expansion plans, operations, business insights, and engagement with the consumer.

The Azure Data Platform Architect will:

Engage with internal and external partners to drive technical design of the Costa Data Platform in a cohesive direction.

Assist business and IT projects in leveraging the facility by engaging with their requirements, directing them to relevant documentation and translating into technical designs

Author KDDs (Key Decision Documents) and HLDs (High Level Designs) that explain and designs to peer review boards for decision and approval.

In partnership with other architects, work to develop and communicate standards.

Participate in agile and waterfall developments, ensuring delivery is to the agreed designs or submitted to change management.

Work with Master Data Management SMEs to obtain strong conformed dimensions that can meet the needs of multiple data warehouses and marts from a single design

Work with global partners to onboard their data sets to the Data Lake and create mappings that form a bridge between the local perspectives and global insight.

Resolve miss-maps and misunderstandings to achieve the desired outcome

Engage strongly in curation of the Data Lake content ensuring that interface diagrams, lineage maps and data definitions are executed in terms that Business Data Analysts and technical teams alike can readily access and leverage.

Ensure the smooth consumption and passage of data to reporting layers in SQL, PowerBI and other tools

Acts as the central reference point and librarian of Costa’s repository of Data Platform design documents, working with partners to review, improve and admit their items.

Identify and work upon areas of low data quality instituting KPIs and dashboards as required

Promote the platform as a corporate information asset. 

Explain all aspects including

Explain all aspects including Machine Learning and Data Science.

Produce business comprehensible slides and diagrams to promote usage and adoption.

Stay on top of the latest trends, developments and possibilities in Synapse, Azure and data management.   Relate new methods and technologies to business opportunities; excite and engage the organisation in the art of the possible.

A bit about you…

Bachelor’s Degree (or equivalent)

Capability to drive the design of Data Platform Architectures across Business, Data, Application and Technology domains

Ability to work in a technical domain but convert this to a business relatable overview and outcome that can be stated in plain English

Proactively collaborating in (and sometimes driving) technical workshops with technical and business teams to derive value added solutions – and to summarise and capture decisions

Ability to capture/summarise complex options in high level diagrams

Good documentation skills which capture the requirements, solution options and justification of recommended solution

Strong experience in relevant technical and/or architecture roles across several platforms/languages/verticals

Proven experience of Azure cloud infrastructures

Demonstrable experience right through the project lifecycle, from functional requirements capture, though design, build and delivery, ideally including Agile

Team-player with collaborative experience of working with internal, outsourced and partner/SI development teams

Experience of working directly or indirectly in a retail or supply-chain industry would be helpful

Technical Skills:

MS Office, Visio or Lucid Charts

SQL, Database design, Star Schemas, Diagnostic Queries, Enterprise Relationship Diagrams (ERDs), Data Flow diagrams, Swimlane diagrams

High level designs, decision documents, technical specifications

Agile and waterfall development methodologies

Data management experience including master data management, governance, lineage, migration, profiling, cleansing

Expert knowledge of the core Azure Synapse stack augmented with Azure Databricks

Architectural understanding of the principles behind Azure Machine Learning, Python, R, IOT, API design, Azure Cloud Storage types, Spark, middleware such as MuleSoft

What we can offer...

We’re on an exceptional adventure and can offer a truly purpose led career with good flexibility to suit your personal needs. In addition, you will benefit from the below:

BUPA Healthcare

Costa Pension Scheme

Bonus Scheme

25% staff discount, including endless free coffee onsite at support office

25 days Holidays

Location / Travel: London / Flexible at this time

At Costa Coffee we celebrate Inclusion and Equality; we believe everyone should bring their true self to work. We advocate collaboration and transparency and embrace differences in all that we do. #nowisthemoment to join.