Group Data Architect

CME is a leading content creator and broadcaster operating in six Central and Eastern European countries. It is comprised of six television broadcasters in Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic (TV Nova), Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia, as well as Voyo, its original subscription video on demand platform. CME’s 45 TV channels reach a total of 49 million people, with market-leading channels in most of its markets.  CME is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the PPF Group, a leading Czech-based investment group with operations in 25 countries across multiple industries including telecommunications and media.

Behind all of our success, there is a community of people from a variety of professions, who love their work, strive to be the best every day and come up with new ideas all the time.

Position Summary

The Group Data Architect serves as the architectural authority for enterprise data across CME Group. The role defines the vision, principles, governance, and technology standards that enable scalable, secure, and business-aligned data platforms supporting analytics, AI, and data-driven business capabilities across the organization.

This role combines strategic architecture leadership with active hands-on engagement through solution design, prototyping, architectural validation, and selective implementation. Maintaining close proximity to engineering practice is an essential part of the role, ensuring architectural decisions remain practical, implementable, and grounded in delivery reality.

Reports to the Group Head of Data. The role has no direct reports and achieves outcomes through architecture leadership, governance, collaboration, and influence rather than formal authority.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy & Architecture

• Partner with the Group Head of Data in defining and executing the enterprise data strategy, translating business objectives into a technical roadmap.

• Define and evolve reusable enterprise data architecture principles, standards, and reference architectures — data modeling principles, integration patterns, and modern data platform architectures — used across domains.

• Set technology direction for data platforms: evaluate cloud services, AI capabilities, and emerging patterns; make strategic build-versus-buy recommendations.

Governance

• Review solution designs against enterprise standards and security requirements; approve or flag architectural deviations.

• Balance consistency with domain autonomy — define where teams must align vs. where they can decide locally.

• Evolve architecture governance processes into a consistent enterprise practice.

Technical Leadership & Hands-on Engagement

• Maintain close engagement with engineering teams through solution design, prototyping, and selective implementation — typically on high-risk enterprise initiatives, new platform builds (e.g. GCP/BigQuery migrations), or projects where additional architectural expertise is required.

• Provide technical continuity and architectural expertise during critical deliveries and strategic implementation initiatives.

Stakeholder & Technology Partnerships

• Work with Product Owners, Engineering, Enterprise Architecture, Security, and business stakeholders to keep architecture aligned with delivery reality.

• Collaborate with technology vendors and implementation partners to support platform evolution and technology adoption.

Experience & Qualifications

• Proven track record designing enterprise-scale data architectures and cloud-native data platforms.

• Deep expertise in data modeling, integration patterns, modern data platform architectures, and data governance frameworks.

• Experience establishing architecture principles and governance across multiple teams or business domains.

• Experience architecting enterprise analytics and AI platforms.

• Strong experience with modern cloud technologies; Google Cloud Platform and BigQuery are a significant advantage.

• Experience working with technology vendors, implementation partners, and cross-functional delivery teams.

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to engage both engineers and business stakeholders.

Personal Attributes

• Balances long-term architectural vision with pragmatic, shippable delivery.

• Comfortable influencing without formal authority.

• Systems thinker who can navigate ambiguity across multiple domains and stakeholders.

• Comfortable making architectural decisions with incomplete information while balancing long-term strategy and short-term delivery needs.

• Builds trust through technical credibility, collaboration, and sound architectural judgment.