Lead Consultant (Data Strategist)

Apex Systems•Glen Allen, VA

28d

About The Position

Apex Systems is seeking a Lead Consultant to serve as a Data Strategist, guiding enterprise clients through the development of modern data strategies, operating models, governance frameworks, and analytics architectures. This role emphasizes strategic advisory, data engineering patterns, and enterprise governance, helping clients evolve how they manage, use, and derive value from their data. As a trusted advisor and technical leader, you will shape data roadmaps, define future-state architectures, recommend governance and quality frameworks, and ensure alignment between business objectives and technology investments. You will also support pre-sales activities by providing subject matter expertise on data strategy and solution design.

Requirements

7+ years of total experience, including: 3+ years as a hands-on data engineer and 2+ years in data architecture and strategy-focused roles.
Demonstrated progression from hands-on engineering to advisory and architectural responsibilities.
Experience defining data strategies, governance models, and data operating frameworks for large organizations.
Strong understanding of modern data architectures including lakehouse, medallion, data warehouse, and domain-oriented patterns.
Hands-on experience building or overseeing cloud data pipelines (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
Knowledge of data governance fundamentals: stewardship, metadata management, data quality, retention, and access control frameworks.
Proficiency with SQL and modern ELT/ETL design principles.
Experience with at least one modern cloud data platform (Snowflake preferred, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift, Microsoft Fabric acceptable).
Familiarity with BI, analytics, and semantic modeling tools (Power BI, Tableau, Looker, or similar).
Strong consultative and communication skills, with the ability to translate complex technical concepts for business stakeholders.
Experience leading teams and delivering solutions in Agile environments.
BA/BS required; MS preferred or equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

Snowflake certifications or experience with Snowflake Professional Services (nice to have).
Experience with Fivetran, dbt, Matillion, IDMC, or similar data integration tools preferred.
Understanding of DataOps, CI/CD, and version-controlled pipeline deployments preferred.
Exposure to ML/AI workloads using cloud-native services or frameworks such as Snowpark preferred.

Responsibilities

Lead the development of enterprise data strategies, including current-state assessments, visioning, capability maturity, and roadmap planning.
Define data operating models, including processes, organizational roles, and decision-making structures.
Collaborate with business stakeholders to align data assets and architectures to key business priorities, KPIs, and analytics use cases.
Translate business requirements into strategic data architecture options and implementation plans.
Architect scalable, well-governed, and business-aligned data solutions across AWS, Azure, or GCP environments.
Design modern data architectures including medallion/lakehouse patterns, data warehouses, and domain-oriented/data mesh-aligned structures.
Develop data modeling approaches (dimensional, vault, semantic models) to support analytics and operational workloads.
Oversee the design and development of cloud data pipelines using tools such as AWS Glue, S3, Lambda, Step Functions, Azure Data Factory, GCP Dataflow, or similar.
Provide strategic and technical direction to engineering teams during solution implementation.
Advise clients on data governance, including stewardship roles, metadata strategy, data quality practices, and compliance frameworks.
Ensure robust governance across security, privacy, lineage, access controls, and compliance requirements.
Serve as the strategic and technical lead for project teams, ensuring alignment to business goals and industry best practices.
Build and maintain strong relationships with client executives, business owners, and technical teams.
Mentor junior engineers and consultants, supporting skill development and growth.
Support pre-sales and solutioning, including scoping, architectural recommendations, and client presentations.
Contribute thought leadership at client engagements and industry forums.
Serve as the technical lead for project teams, ensuring high-quality execution and alignment with best practices.
Listen and seek to understand the client and meet their needs, providing consultative guidance.
Perform assessments of client data ecosystems and develop scalable and robust solutions architectures to meet analytics and operational demands and forecasts.
Stay attuned to the future needs of the client and work with internal resources to identify opportunities.
Build and foster relationships with clients, stakeholders, and technical communities, representing Apex Systems at industry events.
Stay current with technological trends, proactively identifying innovative solutions to improve client outcomes.