Lead Data Architect

C5MI Insight

13h•$172,300 - $187,100

About The Position

The Lead Data Architect owns enterprise data architecture for a large-scale, greenfield SAP S/4HANA financial management modernization program for a Department of War organization. The role is accountable for the target-state data model, master data governance strategy, legacy data migration architecture, and analytics and data fabric layer supporting enterprise reporting and decision-making. It leads the data architecture and master data team and establishes authoritative standards that enable financial, logistics, asset, and organizational information to reconcile without manual intervention. The position is accountable for data quality at each deployment wave and for the lineage and provenance evidence required to support financial audit. This position is contingent upon contract award. The role also provides people leadership, including performance management, employee development, workforce planning, team effectiveness, compliance and risk management, and stakeholder communication. It requires travel to client sites of up to 50%, varying with program schedules, and adherence to certified processes, quality assurance activities, and information security policies.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent experience. With a bachelor’s degree: 8–12 years of relevant experience and 3–5 years of people leadership experience. Without a degree: 10–14 years of relevant experience and 5–8 years of people leadership experience.
At least 8 years of enterprise data architecture, data modeling, or data management experience on large-scale system implementations.
Demonstrated ownership of data architecture for at least one full-lifecycle ERP implementation, including legacy data migration to a target platform.
Expertise in conceptual, logical, and physical data modeling, canonical data models, data lineage, and data quality management.
Experience establishing a master data governance operating model, including stewardship roles, data quality rules, and governance workflows.
Hands-on experience with enterprise data migration tooling and methods, including extraction, profiling, cleansing, transformation, loading, and reconciliation.
Experience designing analytics or data platform architectures, including layered curation and semantic modeling for enterprise reporting.
Experience leading a data team, including work allocation, quality review, and performance management.
Must hold an active Secret security clearance or be able to obtain and maintain one before assignment; U.S. citizenship is required.
Ability to travel to client sites up to 50%, according to client program schedules.

Nice To Haves

Active Secret security clearance at time of hire.
Experience with SAP Master Data Governance and SAP data migration tooling, including SAP S/4HANA migration cockpit and SAP Data Services.
Industry-recognized data management, data architecture, or SAP certification; examples include CDMP or SAP Master Data Governance.
Experience supporting federal ERP modernization programs, Department of War SAP environments, or other defense business systems acquired under DoDI 5000.75.
Familiarity with Department of War data strategy principles and authoritative data source designation.
Familiarity with federal financial audit drivers, including the Financial Improvement and Audit Readiness methodology, DoD 7000.14-R (Financial Management Regulation), and FFMIA.
Experience with cloud data platform technologies supporting large-scale analytical workloads.
Advanced certifications are valued.

Responsibilities

Own the target-state enterprise data architecture, including conceptual, logical, and physical data models for financial, organizational, asset, material, and business partner master data domains.
Lead and develop the data architecture and master data team; allocate work and own team performance and capability development.
Establish the master data governance operating model, including domain ownership, stewardship assignment, approval workflows, data quality rules, and measurable data quality standards.
Own legacy data migration architecture, including source system discovery and profiling, extraction approach, transformation and mapping governance, staging design, and source-to-target lineage.
Define data validation, reconciliation, and acceptance criteria for mock conversion cycles and production cutover, and report readiness against those criteria at milestone gates.
Design organizational data structures that align financial objects to the customer’s force structure hierarchy and enable consistent translation among logistics, asset, and financial reporting views.
Govern analytics and data fabric architecture, including ingestion, layered curation, semantic modeling, and governed consumption of financial data by downstream enterprise analytics platforms.
Establish reconciliation architecture between the financial system of record, subledgers, external interfaces, and the reporting layer to minimize manual reconciliation effort.
Define data retention, archiving, classification, and protection standards consistent with federal records management and controlled unclassified information handling requirements.
Partner with solution and cloud architecture functions to ensure data designs are performant, secure, authorizable, and sustainable.
Present and defend data architecture and migration readiness at preliminary design review, critical design review, production readiness review, and cutover decision points.
Advise program leadership on data-driven risk, including migration complexity, data quality exposure, and schedule implications of source system conditions.
Mentor data practitioners across the program and improve data modeling, governance, and stewardship maturity.
Travel to client sites up to 50%, varying based on client program schedules.
Participate in quality assurance activities and protect sensitive information in accordance with security policies and certified processes.
Perform other related tasks as assigned by the direct supervisor.
Set performance expectations; provide coaching, feedback, and recognition; conduct goal-setting, evaluations, and development planning; and address performance, conduct, and attendance issues in a timely, compliant manner.
Develop employees through coaching, mentoring, training, and stretch assignments; identify skill gaps and development needs; and support succession planning and talent pipeline readiness.
Foster an inclusive, respectful, high-performing environment; promote accountability and collaboration; and reinforce company values and professional standards.
Plan, assign, and prioritize work to meet delivery, quality, and timeline goals; manage workloads and staffing within approved parameters; and escalate resource risks or constraints.
Apply company policies and employment practices consistently, partner with HR on employee relations matters, and identify and mitigate people, delivery, and compliance risks.
Communicate expectations, decisions, and changes clearly; align team objectives with business priorities; and collaborate across matrixed, cross-functional, and client environments.
Adhere to C5MI policies and procedures and conduct oneself consistently with company core values.
Maintain a positive and respectful attitude, report to work on time and prepared, meet productivity standards, maintain company information privacy, and treat vendors, customers, and team members with respect and dignity.
Safely perform the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodation.