Senior Architect - Data & Semantic Intelligence

Surescripts

27d • $171,100 - $209,100 • Hybrid

About The Position

Surescripts serves the nation through simpler, trusted health intelligence sharing, in order to increase patient safety, lower costs and ensure quality care. We deliver insights at critical points of care for better decisions — from streamlining prior authorizations to delivering comprehensive medication histories to facilitating messages between providers. The Senior Architect - Data and Semantic Intelligence serves as the technical authority for how data is modeled, structured, and made meaningful across the Enterprise Data Platform. This is the most senior individual contributor architecture role within the platform organization, and it carries a mandate that is broader and more consequential than a traditional data architecture position. This position will operate across two interconnected domains that most organizations treat separately and that Surescripts has deliberately unified. The first is data and solution architecture: the structural decisions that govern how the platform is designed, how systems connect, and how data flows from source to consumer. The second is semantic intelligence: the canonical data model, semantic layer design, and the knowledge frameworks through which data becomes understandable and trustworthy to internal teams, external partners, and machine and AI consumers alike. This role is the design authority for the platform. This role reports to the VP of Enterprise Data Platform and works alongside the leads of Unified Data Fabric, Data Product Delivery, Platform Engineering, and Trust & Enablement teams as the technical conscience of the entire organization.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, business administration, or related field.
• 12+ years of experience in data architecture, solution architecture, or a closely related technical discipline, with a strong track record of designing and delivering enterprise-scale data platforms.
• Deep expertise in data modeling, both relational and semantic, including canonical model design, entity resolution, ontology development, or knowledge graph architecture.
• Proven experience defining and governing semantic layers (metrics layers, business glossaries, or semantic data models), ideally in a platform context serving multiple consumer types.
• Strong command of cloud data platform architecture, with Google Cloud Platform and BigQuery experience strongly preferred.
• Experience defining externalization and API architecture for data platforms, including understanding of data contracts, access patterns, and the specific requirements of external partner and machine consumer use cases.
• Familiarity with semantic technologies (RDF, OWL, property graphs, or knowledge graph platforms).
• Demonstrated ability to operate as a technical authority — setting direction, making consequential decisions, and holding delivery teams accountable to architectural standards without being a bottleneck.
• Experience in healthcare, life sciences, or a similarly regulated data environment.
• Deep understanding of healthcare data domains (pharmacy, clinical, claims, provider) is required.
• Demonstrated ability to explain complex architectural decisions to both engineering teams and senior business stakeholders with equal clarity and confidence.

Nice To Haves

• Advanced degree in computer science, engineering, business administration, or related field
• Experience implementing platform capabilities supporting synthetic data, data observability, metadata management, and data trust frameworks

Responsibilities

• Own the enterprise data architecture. Define and maintain the architectural blueprint for Surescripts' Enterprise Data Platform, including the medallion data lake structure, domain data models, integration patterns, and the long-term technical direction of the platform.
• Make authoritative architecture decisions and ensure they are documented, communicated, and enforced across all delivery teams.
• Lead solution architecture across the platform. Serve as the primary solution architect for complex, cross-cutting platform initiatives.
• Evaluate build vs. buy decisions, assess new technology introductions, and define the reference architectures that delivery teams execute against.
• Ensure architectural consistency across all teams within the Enterprise Data Platform organization.
• Own the canonical data model. Design and govern the canonical data model that serves as the authoritative definition of Surescripts' core data entities: patient identity, provider identity, drug reference, transaction records, and the relationships between them.
• Ensure the canonical model is the foundation from which all data products and gold layer assets are built, preventing the proliferation of domain-specific models that fragment the platform.
• Lead semantic model design. Define the semantic layer specifications (entity definitions, metric logic, relationship structures, and business rules) that live in the Git repository as the platform's semantic source of truth.
• Establish the design gate: no data product build begins without an Architecture-approved semantic design artifact.
• Own the standards by which semantic models are designed, reviewed, and versioned.
• Define platform topology and externalization principles. Establish the architectural principles that govern how the platform is structured externally and with what access and trust requirements.
• Define the externalization architecture that Platform Engineering implements, ensuring that what gets built reflects strategic intent rather than infrastructure convenience.
• Architect for machine and AI consumers. Lead the design of the platform's AI-readiness architecture: the semantic context, knowledge graph structures, and API patterns that make Surescripts data consumable by machine and AI consumers reliably and at scale.
• Ensure that the platform's semantic layer is designed with machine interpretability as a first-class requirement.
• Drive architectural governance. Establish and chair the architecture review process for the Enterprise Data Platform.
• Evaluate proposed designs from delivery teams, identify risks and deviations from canonical patterns, and provide structured feedback that accelerates rather than blocks delivery.
• Build a culture where architectural review is sought out.
• Partner with Trust & Enablement on semantic standards. Work closely with the Director of Trust & Enablement to ensure that canonical model definitions are reflected in Collibra's business glossary and governed appropriately.
• Ensure the bridge between technical semantic design (Git) and business-facing catalog (Collibra) is maintained and automated where possible.
• Shape the technology roadmap. Contribute to the Enterprise Data Platform's long-term technology roadmap as the senior technical voice in the organization.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and advise on how and when to incorporate them into the platform strategy.
• Contribute to platform strategy. Participate as a senior leader in the Enterprise Data Platform leadership team.
• Bring the perspective of the data foundation into roadmap planning, organizational decisions, and executive reporting through the VP of Enterprise Data Platform.

Benefits

• comprehensive healthcare (including infertility coverage)
• generous paid time off including paid childbirth and parental leave and mental health days
• pet insurance
• 401(k) with company match and immediate vesting

What This Job Offers

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