Data Architect – BigQuery & dbt

About the role

Lastminute.com, a European travel-tech leader in dynamic holiday packages, is hiring a Data Architect to join its Data Platform & Architecture team in the Data department. The role is based in Chiasso, Switzerland, on a hybrid basis, and leads the architecture of the company's modern data stack.

Key responsibilities

• Lead the architecture of the data stack on BigQuery and dbt, setting patterns, standards and trade-offs for new and migrated workloads.
• Design and evolve the GCP data platform (BigQuery, Cloud Composer/Airflow, GKE, Cloud Run, Cloud SQL, GCS), including data services and AI agents, managed as infrastructure as code with Terraform and GitLab CI.
• Own the data ingestion layer, from batch and CDC replication to event streams, with standards for reliability, freshness, cost and schema evolution.
• Define and maintain access management and security, cost efficiency (FinOps), data lineage and observability.
• Act as technical reference for data engineers and analysts: review designs, write architecture decision records and turn recurring solutions into reusable assets (Terraform modules, templates, documentation, AI context).

Required profile

• Proven hands-on experience designing and running data platforms on a public cloud, ideally GCP; the focus is on what has been built rather than years of experience.
• Fluent written and spoken English, able to explain architectural trade-offs to engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
• Desirable: experience building and deploying AI agents, data integration/streaming tools (Airbyte, Debezium/CDC, Kafka) and data governance practices.

Required skills

• Terraform and CI/CD (GitLab CI or similar), cloud IAM, networking and containerised workloads (Kubernetes, Cloud Run)
• BigQuery or a comparable cloud data warehouse, including data modelling, partitioning, clustering and cost optimisation
• dbt and Airflow/Cloud Composer, and Python for automation and lightweight services

What we offer

• Permanent full-time contract (36 hours per week) with a shorter working week and flexible start and end times (core hours 10:00-16:00)
• Half-day Friday mornings for deep work, learning and training, plus professional and managerial development paths
• Access to e-learning platforms and internal training, plus occasional social events and travel industry discounts
• Leave options for life events in line with local law