Lead Data Platform Architect

CLA (CliftonLarsonAllen)•Hudson, WI

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

CLA is growing and seeking to hire an experienced Senior Data Platform Architect to join our talented Information Technology team. The position offers growth, flexibility and a collaborative work environment. This role is responsible for guiding platform architecture and engineering practices across one or more platform domains (e.g., cloud foundation, container platforms, integration, data platforms, developer experience). This role leads a small team of platform architects, sets technical direction, establishes enterprise platform standards, and partners with Cloud Architecture, DevOps, and engineering leaders to define platform strategies, automation frameworks, and CI/CD deployment patterns that enable secure, scalable, and reliable software delivery across the organization.

Requirements

6 years relevant experience required.
Expert knowledge of enterprise platform architecture, platform engineering principles, and large-scale technology ecosystems.
Advanced knowledge of cloud architecture and cloud-native technologies across Azure, AWS, and/or Google Cloud Platform environments.
Expertise establishing platform standards, governance frameworks, reference architectures, and technology roadmaps.
Experience defining enterprise CI/CD strategies, deployment patterns, release automation frameworks, and DevOps operating models.
Advanced understanding of Infrastructure as Code (IaC), platform automation, and environment provisioning technologies.
Deep knowledge of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), observability, monitoring, logging, performance engineering, and operational excellence practices.
Advanced understanding of security architecture, identity and access management, secrets management, vulnerability management, and secure software delivery practices.
Experience leading architecture reviews and governing technology decisions across multiple products, platforms, or teams.
Expertise communicating architectural vision and technical strategy to executive, business, and technical stakeholders.
Bachelor's degree is required. Combination of relevant experience, education, and training may be accepted in lieu of degree.

Nice To Haves

Experience in platform engineering, cloud architecture, SRE, or infrastructure engineering preferred.
Supervisory experience preferred.
Degree in Information Management, Computer Science, or a related field preferred.

Responsibilities

Define and evolve platform reference architectures, standards, guardrails, and deployment patterns that enable engineering teams to deliver software safely, consistently, and efficiently.
Establish target-state platform roadmaps aligned to business strategy, cloud strategy, security requirements, and technical debt reduction.
Partner with Cloud Architecture leaders to align platform capabilities, cloud services, and infrastructure standards with enterprise architecture objectives.
Evaluate technology options and make architecture recommendations balancing cost, risk, scalability, maintainability, and operational effectiveness.
Lead architecture and design reviews for complex platform initiatives and provide technical leadership across multiple engineering teams.
Define enterprise CI/CD architecture standards, deployment patterns, automation frameworks, and software delivery guardrails.
Partner with DevOps leaders to establish and continuously improve build, release, deployment, and environment management practices across the technology organization.
Ensure platform solutions meet non-functional requirements including availability, performance, resilience, security, compliance, and operability.
Drive adoption of platform capabilities through reference implementations, reusable patterns, technical guidance, and governance.
Provide day-to-day leadership through coaching, mentoring, development, and performance management.
Support hiring, onboarding, workforce planning, and technical skill development.
Promote secure-by-design and compliance-by-default architectural patterns.
Establish governance processes that ensure platform solutions adhere to architectural standards, operational requirements, and risk management practices.
Own or co-own platform reliability practices, including SLOs, SLIs, incident reviews, root-cause analysis, and continuous reliability improvements.
Define platform lifecycle management, including versioning, deprecation strategies, change management, and adoption planning.
Translate complex technical topics into clear decisions and tradeoffs for technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Partner with Cloud Architecture, DevOps, Security, Infrastructure, Network, Data, and Application teams to ensure end-to-end solution integrity and alignment.
Create and maintain architecture artifacts including reference architectures, diagrams, ADRs, deployment standards, and decision logs.