Microsoft Fabric Data Architect

Our client seeks a strategic and forward-thinking Microsoft Fabric Data Architect with proven experience designing and governing enterprise-wide data and analytics ecosystems. Brings strong leadership capability in defining and executing target-state architectures across OneLake, Lakehouse and Warehouse environments, orchestration frameworks, semantic models, and real-time analytics solutions.

Recognised for aligning data architecture with business strategy, ensuring secure, scalable, and cost-efficient platforms that drive measurable outcomes. Experienced in establishing governance frameworks, reference architectures, and best-practice standards that enable high-performing delivery teams. Adept at providing architectural oversight, guiding cross-functional stakeholders, and fostering a data-driven culture within complex, fast-paced environments.

Responsibilities:

• Define and maintain Microsoft Fabric reference architecture (OneLake, Lakehouse/Warehouse, pipelines, notebooks, semantic models).
• Select and implement optimal data patterns (ETL/ELT, batch/streaming, Direct Lake vs Import/DirectQuery).
• Establish and enforce data modelling standards, semantic models, and metric definitions.
• Design governance frameworks, workspace strategies, and security models (RBAC, RLS/OLS, PII handling).
• Plan platform capacity, optimise workloads, and improve performance and cost efficiency.
• Conduct architecture reviews, approve designs, and ensure solution alignment with business goals.
• Mentor engineers and analysts, promoting reusable templates, reference patterns, and best practices.
• Facilitate cross-team alignment on data quality, metric definitions, and delivery standards.
• Produce documentation, CI/CD pipelines, operational runbooks, and incident management resources.

Qualifications and experience:

• Deep hands-on expertise with Microsoft Fabric (Lakehouse, Warehouse, OneLake, semantic models, pipelines/dataflows, Spark)
• Experience in Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse, Azure Databricks, Ms Fabric
• Strong SQL and advanced data modelling skills
• Proven experience in enterprise governance, RLS/OLS, and secure-by-design architectures
• CI/CD and Git-based deployment experience
• Excellent documentation and stakeholder communication skills
• 12+ years in data/BI/analytics, with 2–5+ years in an architecture or lead role
• Experience delivering enterprise data platforms or cloud migrations
• Desirable Certifications: DP-600 – Fabric Analytics Engineer Associate/DP-700 – Fabric Data Engineer Associate/ AZ-305 – Azure Solutions Architect Expert

The reference number for this position is NG61100 which is a permanent Hybrid position based in Johannesburg offering a cost to company of up to R1.6 mil per annum negotiable on experience and ability. Contact Nokuthula at e-merge.co.za or call her on 011 463 3633 to discuss this and other opportunities.

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Posted on 10 Apr 08:50, Closing date 9 Jun