CDP Architect

dentsu•New York, NY

4d•$150,750 - $175,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The CDP Architect is a consultant-first, technically deep role responsible for owning the technical solution across multiple enterprise client engagements. The architect guides clients from discovery and workshops through delivery and steady-state operations, ensuring their data platforms produce measurable business results. The work spans Adobe Experience Platform, Real-Time CDP, Adobe Journey Optimizer, other customer data platforms, and the cloud data platforms around them. The role diagnoses challenges such as fragmented data, unresolved identity, misaligned teams, and weak connections between platforms and business outcomes. It translates those challenges into clear recommendations for both executive stakeholders and technical teams. The CDP Architect serves as a trusted advisor to client leaders, technical lead for multidisciplinary delivery teams, and contributor to pursuits, statements of work, and reusable practice assets. Direct people management is not required, though the role calls for the temperament and ability to manage direct reports if needed. The position also brings AI into consulting and delivery through daily use of assistants and coding agents, and by designing agents, automations, and chatbots integrated with client and internal systems through APIs and MCP. Solutions must include appropriate privacy, accuracy, and human-oversight guardrails. The architect applies security, privacy, consent, documentation, and audit practices, while helping clients determine appropriate uses for AI in their data and journey stack. The role is hybrid for employees within commuting distance of designated headquarters or hub offices, generally requiring office attendance two to three days per week, including one Team Day. Employees who do not live near an office may be designated remote depending on role and business needs. Flexibility to attend an office when company or client needs require it is expected. The position is full-time and permanent. The annual salary range is $150,750–$175,000.

Requirements

Eight or more years of experience in marketing technology, data architecture, or data engineering, including four or more years in consulting or a client-facing role.
Hands-on depth in at least one enterprise CDP, preferably Adobe Experience Platform and Real-Time CDP, and Adobe Journey Optimizer; working knowledge of at least one other CDP.
Strong command of data modeling and identity, including XDM and schema design, identity resolution, and profile unification.
Strong SQL skills, scripting in Python or JavaScript, API fluency (for example, Swagger or Postman), and ETL or ELT practices.
A current Expert-level certification, such as Adobe Real-Time CDP Developer Expert, or an equivalent; if not held at hire, it must be earned within six months.
Executive presence and verbal communication skills, including the ability to lead workshops with marketing leaders and design reviews with data engineers and explain complex concepts to nontechnical stakeholders.
Strong written communication, including architecture decision records, recommendations, and client-ready documentation.
Ability to lead without authority in a matrixed environment across strategy, marketing, analytics, technology, finance, and customer success.
Working fluency with AI tools, demonstrated through examples of using or building with them to deliver better or faster work.
Understanding of security and privacy best practices.
Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
Ability to stay current with customer-centric digital experience personalization trends and software, industry innovations, business practices, and third-party technology solutions.
Commitment to developing competencies in experience personalization at scale and improving internal systems and processes based on client requests or evolving standards.

Nice To Haves

Adobe Experience Cloud depth beyond CDP, including Adobe Journey Optimizer, Customer Journey Analytics, Data Collection and Web SDK, AEM, Campaign, Target, Marketo, or Merkury.
Experience with cloud data platforms such as Snowflake, Salesforce Data Cloud, Databricks, BigQuery, AWS, Azure, or Microsoft Fabric.
Experience building agents, MCP servers, or other AI integrations with marketing and data platforms.
Industry experience in financial services, insurance, healthcare and life sciences, travel and hospitality, retail, or media.
Consulting or agency background, including scoping, estimating, and presenting in pursuits.
Track record of mentoring and developing other technologists.

Responsibilities

Lead client discovery and assessments that connect CDP and martech capabilities to business outcomes such as revenue, retention, cost to serve, and speed to market.
Develop client value roadmaps that prioritize what to fix, build, or retire and explain the value of each step.
Present findings and recommendations to executives in clear language, including tradeoffs and a recommended path; prepare decision memos as well as architecture diagrams.
Partner with analytics and measurement teams to demonstrate return on technology investment after launch.
Identify delivery opportunities and bring them to account leadership with a sound technical case.
Design end-to-end CDP architecture covering data ingestion and egress, XDM and schema models, identity resolution, profiles, audiences, and activation to channels and journeys.
Diagnose and remediate identity and profile issues, including linking rules, profile collapse, and merge policies.
Define integrations across cloud warehouses and lakes, CRM, email and messaging platforms, advertising platforms, and data collection tools.
Document architecture decisions, options, tradeoffs, and rationale.
Review others' designs and builds for quality, scalability, performance, and cost.
Lead technical delivery by setting standards, removing blockers, and managing dependencies across strategy, marketing, analytics, technology, finance, and customer success.
Find and resolve platform and client data-feed problems from ingestion through distribution before they become client issues.
Estimate, size, and sequence work, and raise risks early to delivery and account leads.
Mentor engineers, developers, and junior architects through design reviews and pairing on difficult problems.
Use AI assistants and coding agents to accelerate discovery, design, documentation, QA, and build work.
Design and build agents, automations, and chatbots that connect to client and internal systems through APIs and MCP integrations, with privacy, accuracy, and human-oversight guardrails.
Contribute to the team's AI accelerator library and share effective practices with colleagues.
Advise clients on where AI is appropriate in their data and journey stack and where it is not.
Apply security, privacy, and consent best practices and maintain documentation and controls suitable for client audits.
Align solutions with Merkle standards and industry best practices.
Stay current on CDP and martech innovation and develop a point of view across Adobe, Salesforce, and independent vendors.
Turn recurring client requests into repeatable assets and improved internal processes.
Support pursuits, oral presentations, and client workshops.
Stay current on customer-centric digital experience personalization trends, relevant software, industry technology innovations, business practices, and third-party solutions.
Continuously mature personalization competencies and help improve internal systems and processes in response to recurring client requests or evolving standards.