Principal Architect

Service Experts•Richardson, TX

23h

About The Position

Service Experts is seeking a Principal Architect to lead the architectural strategy, operating model, and technical governance of the enterprise Operational Data Platform (ODP) and Data‑as‑a‑Product (DaaP) transformation. This role serves as the single-threaded owner of the data platform architecture and is accountable for platform stability, scalability, governance, vendor performance, and long-term modernization.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in data, platform, or enterprise architecture roles.
3+ years designing and operating cloud-native data platforms (Azure strongly preferred).
Deep expertise in Azure Databricks, Spark, Delta Lake, Power BI, and Data Ops practices.
Experience leading onsite and offshore teams within managed services or hybrid delivery models.
Strong background in governance, security, and regulated environments (SOX).
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree preferred.

Responsibilities

Own the enterprise architecture for the Azure-based data platform, including Databricks, Azure Data Factory, Delta Lake, and Power BI.
Define and maintain platform architecture standards, reference patterns, and future-state roadmaps aligned to business strategy.
Ensure the platform enables analytics, reporting, and AI/ML workloads at enterprise scale.
Establish and govern Data-as-a-Product standards including ownership, SLAs, documentation, metadata, lineage, and quality requirements.
Partner with Product Owners and domain teams to enable scalable data product delivery.
Lead and coordinate all onsite and offshore resources supporting the Operational Data Platform, including L1–L3 support, data engineering, analytics, and platform operations teams.
Act as the single architectural and operational authority for a hybrid delivery model spanning onshore leadership and offshore execution teams.
Define clear roles, responsibilities, escalation paths, and RACI frameworks across vendors and internal teams.
Hold managed service providers accountable for SLAs, security standards, architectural compliance, and operational excellence.
Own the Data Ops operating model including incident management, change governance, release coordination, and production support.
Establish severity-based support coverage and on-call models.
Lead root cause analysis initiatives and drive continuous platform reliability improvements.
Define and enforce governance standards for RBAC, data masking, CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, and audit readiness.
Ensure SOX and privacy controls are embedded in platform architecture and operations.
Serve as technical authority during audits by providing architectural artifacts and operational evidence.
Define the observability strategy for pipeline health, data quality, platform metrics, cost telemetry, and SLA enforcement.
Champion Data Reliability Engineering practices and proactive monitoring.