Information Architect

Northern Trust • Chicago, IL

1d • $137,400 - $240,400 • Hybrid

About The Position

Northern Trust is a global leader in innovative wealth management, asset servicing, asset management, and banking services. With over 135 years of financial experience and more than 24,000 partners, they serve sophisticated clients using leading technology and exceptional service. This role is crucial for leading and contributing to data modeling and architecture, governing data models, defining canonical data entities, and translating business requirements into data structures. The position also involves integrating semantic layers with enterprise metadata tools, designing semantic models for AI capabilities, and defining data domains. Additionally, the role will focus on designing data product schemas, enforcing architectural guardrails for data products, and embedding data contract standards. A key aspect of this role is leveraging AI tools like Snowflake Cortex, Databricks Genie, and GitHub Copilot to enhance data product delivery and development. The Information Architect will act as a design authority, partner with other architecture teams, and present decisions to stakeholders and review boards. Support for regulatory compliance through robust lineage, metadata management, and data quality evidence is also expected, along with mentoring junior architects.

Requirements

• Proven experience in data architecture, data engineering, or information management.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Science, Engineering, or a related discipline.
• Proven enterprise data modelling experience at conceptual, logical, and physical levels.
• Hands-on SqlDBM experience (or equivalent modern toolset).
• Proven experience with dbt Labs.
• Good Python skills, API integration, automation.
• Practical Snowflake and Databricks experience including Cortex AI and Genie.
• Working knowledge of OWL, RDF, SPARQL and enterprise ontology design.
• Experience with at least one agentic AI framework.
• GitHub Copilot or equivalent AI coding assistant experience in a professional setting.
• Financial services background preferred; BCBS 239 awareness advantageous.

Nice To Haves

• Data Vault 2.1 alongside Kimball/Star-schema modelling.
• Data mesh, data product ownership and federated governance.
• Knowledge graph platforms (Neo4j, Neptune) or knowledge of OWL, RDF and exposure to and build of ontologies.
• Published thought leadership or community contributions in data or AI.

Responsibilities

• Lead and contribute with conceptual, logical, and physical data model design aligned to the firm's data mesh and medallion architectures.
• Govern and maintain the enterprise data model library in SqlDBM, enforcing naming conventions, domain standards, and versioning.
• Define and steward canonical data entities and lineage across source, integration, and consumption layers.
• Help with the translation of business requirements into rigorous data structures in collaboration with engineering and domain teams.
• Guide teams on the design and effective use of semantic data models, including their application to agentic AI solutions.
• Integrate semantic layers with business glossaries, data catalogues, and lineage tooling.
• Design and maintain semantic models to support agentic-AI capabilities.
• Help develop ontologies, taxonomies, and controlled vocabularies underpinning enterprise metadata and search.
• Define semantic modelling standards and patterns to ensure consistent meaning, interoperability, and AI readiness across data products.
• Guide and control the creation of data domains that align with the banks underlying capabilities.
• Design data product schemas across Snowflake and Databricks, including Delta Lake structures and access patterns.
• Define and enforce architectural guardrails for data product design, including performance, scalability, security, and cost efficiency.
• Set design standards and review transformation/pipelines for compliance.
• Embed data contract standards and data quality frameworks across pipeline outputs.
• Leverage Snowflake Cortex / Databricks Genie (or similar) to help engineering teams deliver natural language query and LLM-augmented data products.
• Utilize GitHub Copilot (or similar) to accelerate modelling, documentation, and pipeline development.
• Design and define a set of agentic skills that can be provided to implementation teams.
• Contribute to the firm's AI Champion network, evaluating emerging capabilities and advising on adoption.
• Act as a design authority for data architecture across teams and data domains.
• Partner with enterprise, security, and risk architecture to ensure data solutions align with broader technology and regulatory standards.
• Provide early-stage architectural input to initiative discovery and solution design to reduce delivery risk.
• Present architecture decisions to senior stakeholders, architecture review boards, and regulatory audiences.
• Support regulatory compliance through robust lineage, metadata management, and data quality evidence.
• Mentor junior architects and engineers within the Information Architecture community of practice.

Benefits

• Retirement benefits (401k and pension)
• Health and welfare benefits (medical, dental, vision, spending accounts and disability)
• Paid time off
• Parental and caregiver leave
• Life & accident insurance
• Other voluntary and well-being benefits
• Discretionary bonus program that may include an equity component

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior