Data Platform Architect (26-27)
About The Position
The Data Platform Architect is a senior technical leader responsible for ensuring the long-term coherence, scalability, and integrity of IDEA’s modern data platform. This role provides deep architectural expertise across cloud data platforms, pipelines, models, and governance to support IDEA’s transition to a Snowflake-based lakehouse and modern analytics stack. This is a high-impact, senior individual contributor role that will lead through architectural depth, technical judgment, and design stewardship, ensuring that platform decisions made today remain durable, secure, and cost-effective over years of growth. The Data Platform Architect operates in close partnership with the Managing Director of Data Platform & Engineering, translating platform strategy into architectural patterns, standards, and guardrails that enable teams to move quickly without creating long-term risk.
Requirements
- Cloud data platform architecture
- SQL and data modeling
- ELT frameworks and dbt
- Data governance, lineage, and security patterns
- Architectural documentation and design review
- Iceberg or other modern table formats
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field (Master’s preferred)
- 8+ years designing and supporting enterprise data platforms
- Deep experience with cloud data architectures (Snowflake, Databricks, or comparable platforms)
- Strong background in dimensional modeling, ELT pipelines, and analytics engineering patterns
- Proven experience guiding architecture in complex, evolving environments
- Demonstrated ability to influence without direct authority
- Prolonged periods working on a computer and in virtual meetings
- Ability to travel domestically via car and air travel
- Occasional evening/weekend work during critical deployments or incidents
- Flexibility for different time zones when collaborating with distributed teams
Nice To Haves
- Data quality and observability tooling
- Semantic layers and metrics stores
- Data mesh or federated analytics patterns
Responsibilities
- Define and maintain reference architectures for IDEA’s modern data platform, including Snowflake lakehouse patterns, ELT workflows, semantic layers, and data governance integration.
- Establish architectural standards and design principles that ensure scalability, reliability, security, and cost efficiency across all data domains.
- Serve as the architectural authority for complex, high-impact design decisions, identifying tradeoffs and long-term implications.
- Proactively identify architectural risks related to performance, cost, security, compliance, and technical debt.
- Advise leadership on mitigation strategies and design alternatives before risks materialize.
- Ensure architectural decisions balance speed with durability in a multi-state, high-paced environment.
- Lead architecture and design reviews for data platform initiatives, pipelines, and data products.
- Ensure consistent use of approved patterns while allowing for innovation where appropriate.
- Elevate engineering quality through guidance, documentation, and feedback rather than direct execution.
- Translate the enterprise platform strategy into actionable architectural guidance for engineers and analytics teams.
- Define reusable patterns for ingestion, transformation (dbt), testing, observability, and semantic modeling.
- Support adoption of modern data practices including ELT-first design, automated testing, lineage tracking, and self-service analytics enablement.
- Mentor data platform engineers and analytics engineers on architectural thinking and system design.
- Contribute to the development of architectural literacy across the data organization.
- Help teams understand why architectural standards exist, not just what they are.
- Partner with contracted services, as needed, to speed maturity.
Benefits
- medical, dental, and vision plans, disability, life insurance, parenting benefits, flexible spending account options, generous vacation time, referral bonuses, professional development, and a 403(b) plan
- IDEA may offer a relocation stipend to defray the cost of moving for this role, if applicable.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Mid Level
