Principal Data Architect

Egen•Nashville, TN

6d•$180,000 - $250,000

About The Position

Egen is seeking a Principal Data Architect to lead the architecture, design, and implementation of scalable Data Lakehouse solutions on Google Cloud Platform. The role combines strategic architecture with hands-on delivery, including data pipeline design, proof-of-concept development, performance tuning, and client advisory work. The architect will collaborate with customers and internal stakeholders to translate business goals and data challenges into actionable technical solutions, while promoting governance, security, scalability, and maintainability. The position also provides technical leadership and mentorship to project teams.

Requirements

8–10 years of progressive experience in software engineering and data platform development.
At least 5 years of experience architecting data platforms on GCP and/or Databricks.
Hands-on experience designing and deploying Data Lakehouse platforms with data products and medallion architectures.
Strong understanding of real-time and batch ingestion patterns, ETL/ELT pipeline design, and data orchestration using tools such as Airflow, Pub/Sub, or similar frameworks.
Expertise in data modeling, storage optimization, partitioning, and performance tuning for large-scale analytical workloads.
Experience implementing data governance, security, and cataloging solutions such as Dataplex, Data Catalog, IAM, or equivalents.
Excellent communication and presentation skills, including the ability to engage technical and non-technical stakeholders and guide clients through solution decisions.
Demonstrated ability to lead by example in teams of engineers, analysts, and architects while balancing architectural vision with hands-on delivery.
Strong problem-solving mindset, curiosity about new technologies, and ability to move between architecture-level discussions and code-level troubleshooting.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Databricks, including Delta Lake and Unity Catalog, and hybrid GCP-Databricks data architectures.

Responsibilities

Lead end-to-end architecture, design, and implementation of scalable Data Lakehouse solutions on GCP using BigQuery, GCS, BigLake, and Dataplex.
Work directly with customers to understand business goals, data challenges, and technical requirements, translating them into architectural blueprints and actionable plans.
Design and implement data pipelines for real-time and batch ingestion using modern orchestration and streaming frameworks.
Establish and enforce practices for data cataloging, metadata management, lineage, and data quality across systems.
Define and implement data security, access control, and governance models that comply with enterprise and regulatory standards.
Serve as technical lead for project teams by mentoring engineers, reviewing solutions, and ensuring architectural consistency.
Balance strategic architecture discussions with hands-on solutioning, proofs of concept, pipeline deep dives, and performance tuning.
Partner with stakeholders, cloud architects, and delivery leads to advance solution adoption, scalability, and long-term maintainability.
Represent Egen as a trusted technical advisor in client engagements, communicating trade-offs, best practices, and recommendations.