Job Description

About Umicore

Reducing harmful vehicle emissions. Giving new life to used metals. Powering the cars of the future. As a global materials and technology group, we apply our specialist knowledge to offer materials and solutions that are essential to everyday life. We aim to be a clear world leader in materials for clean mobility and recycling and have turned our sustainability approach into an even greater competitive advantage. With ambitions like this, imagine what you could do?

Department description and responsibilities

Our Information Services department is in the middle of an exciting transformation. We're moving away from traditional, siloed data warehouses toward a domain-driven, data product architecture: data mesh principles on a modern Databricks stack with dbt and Unity Catalog. The goal is to empower each Business Unit to own and build their data products, while keeping the overall landscape coherent and governed. It's a balancing act between local autonomy and enterprise-wide harmonization, and that's exactly where you come in.

As our Data Solutions Architect, you'll be the person who makes our data architecture work in practice. You'll sit with BU teams, help them model their domains, design solid data products, and unlock real analytical and AI-driven value. You'll bridge our central architecture vision and what actually ships.

Concretely, you'll be the go-to architect for teams building on our platform, helping them get data modeling right, navigate governance, and push the boundaries of what's possible with analytics and AI.

Primary Tasks and Responsibilities

• Be the trusted point of contact for BU data teams adopting the platform and building data products
• Turn architecture standards into practical guidelines, reusable templates, and reference data models that teams can actually use
• Work hands-on with teams to design and implement data products on Databricks using Python and dbt, with a sharp eye on data modeling, governance, and security
• Guide teams in building analytical solutions (Power BI, custom front-ends) and help them explore AI/ML use cases on top of the platform
• Challenge and sharpen our architecture principles based on what you learn in the field. Your feedback shapes the framework
• Support migrations from legacy systems (TimeXtender) to the new platform
• Spot common patterns, recurring pain points, and opportunities to make the platform better for everyone

Technical profile requirements

• 4+ years of experience as a data engineer, analytics engineer, or data/solution architect
• Strong understanding of data modeling techniques (dimensional modeling, Data Vault, or similar) and data governance principles
• Solid hands-on skills with Python, dbt, and Databricks (or equivalent data transformation frameworks)
• Experience designing analytical solutions in Power BI or similar BI tools, and ideally with custom front-ends (Streamlit, Dash, Voila, ...)
• Hands-on exposure to Machine Learning workflows (MLflow, model serving) and/or Generative AI applications (agent-based architectures, RAG, MCP servers)
• Track record in large-scale analytics environments. Manufacturing or similar sector, global context preferred
• Familiarity with cloud data architectures and data platform migrations
• SAP data extraction experience (BW or alternative) or other enterprise applications is a strong plus

Non-Technical profile requirements

• A strong communicator who can work with both business stakeholders and deep technical teams, and translate fluently between the two
• Proactive, hands-on, and solution-oriented. You would rather prototype than theorize
• Comfortable navigating complexity: multiple stakeholders, competing priorities, ambiguity
• An agile mindset. You build to scale but you're willing to fail fast and learn faster

Methodology/Certification requirements

Following certifications are a big plus:

• Databricks Data Engineer Associate (or Professional)
• dbt Analytics Engineering Certification
• Azure Data Engineer Associate or Azure Solutions Architect Expert

Language proficiencies

• English: Fluent (spoken and written)
• Dutch and/or French: a plus

Location

• Main location: Brussels, with occasional presence in Hoboken and Olen

What we offer

We aim to lead the way. Not just for our customers, but for our employees too. That is why we strive to create a collaborative environment in which we can all succeed, and a culture through which we can all share ideas, develop our expertise and advance our careers. As you would expect from a world-leading organization, we will also reward your contribution with a competitive salary and benefits. With all this and more, imagine what you could do?

IF OUR PIONEERING APPROACH CAN MAKE US A LEADER IN SUSTAINABILITY, IMAGINE WHAT YOU COULD DO?