Senior Manager Data Architecture

Circle K•Charlotte, NC

2d•Onsite

About The Position

Circle K is looking for a Sr. Manager, Data Architecture to lead the team that defines how enterprise data is discovered, modeled, integrated, governed, and delivered through our modern global data platform. This is a high-impact leadership role for someone who can combine strong people leadership with deep data architecture expertise. The right candidate will bring structure to ambiguity, set clear architectural direction, and help teams move faster by creating reusable patterns, practical standards, and trusted data products across Azure, Snowflake, Databricks, and related data technologies. This role owns the architecture function for the full data lifecycle, from source discovery and ingestion through curated data products and semantic models. The person in this role will lead a team of data architects and modelers while partnering with engineering, analytics, governance, platform, and business teams to deliver scalable, reusable, and business-ready data solutions.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in data, analytics, enterprise architecture, solution architecture, or related technology roles, including 5+ years focused on data architecture.
People leadership experience leading, managing, or mentoring data architects, data modelers, or senior technical specialists.
Strong enterprise data architecture background, including architecture standards, design patterns, roadmaps, governance practices, and cross-domain solution design.
Modern data platform expertise across cloud data platforms such as Azure, Snowflake, Databricks, data lakes, data warehouses, or lakehouse architectures.
Deep data modeling experience, including conceptual, logical, physical, dimensional, and semantic modeling.
Strong knowledge of ingestion and integration patterns, including batch, streaming, CDC, APIs, and file-based data movement.
Experience with governed data products that support analytics, BI, AI/ML, data science, reporting, and operational insight use cases.
Experience with data modeling, cataloging, or governance tools; Erwin experience is preferred.
Strong transformation leadership with the ability to lead teams through ambiguity, modernization, operating model change, and legacy platform migration.
Excellent executive and technical communication skills, with the ability to explain tradeoffs, risks, decisions, and recommendations clearly.

Nice To Haves

Experience in retail, convenience, fuel, merchandising, loyalty, supply chain, finance, store operations, or customer/digital data domains.

Responsibilities

Lead and develop the Data Architecture team, including data architects and modelers responsible for enterprise data design, modeling standards, and architectural direction.
Set the data architecture vision and roadmap for Circle K’s modern data platform, translating strategy into practical standards, reference architectures, and execution priorities.
Create focus and drive decisions across competing priorities, helping teams balance speed, quality, reuse, governance, and business value.
Lead through transformation as teams move from legacy, project-based delivery toward reusable, domain-aligned, product-oriented data platform practices.
Influence across teams and senior stakeholders, building alignment with data engineering, BI, analytics, platform, governance, product, and business leaders.
Guide source discovery and data assessment, including source system identification, data availability, freshness, latency, volume, velocity, and initial source-to-target mapping.
Define ingestion and raw layer architecture, including batch, streaming, CDC, API, and file-based patterns; raw/bronze landing schemas; and incremental load strategies.
Establish cleansed and standardized data structures, including silver layer schema design, data type standardization, format normalization, and consistent transformation patterns.
Own refined and dimensional modeling standards, including facts, dimensions, conformed dimensions, slowly changing dimensions, surrogate keys, business keys, grain definition, and referential relationships.
Design curated data products that integrate data across domains and are reusable, governed, versioned, and aligned to business consumption needs.
Influence semantic layer patterns that provide consistent business metrics, entities, hierarchies, and self-service analytics experiences.
Define reusable architecture patterns for ingestion, transformation, modeling, data products, semantic models, metadata, lineage, and quality controls.
Establish practical design review practices that improve quality and consistency without slowing delivery.
Partner with Data Governance to ensure architecture standards support data quality, ownership, stewardship, privacy, security, retention, and regulatory requirements.
Create clear architecture documentation that can be used by engineers, product teams, governance partners, business stakeholders, and senior leaders.
Partner with Data Engineering, BI, Analytics, Platform, DevOps/DataOps, Data Governance, and business product teams to shape integrated data solutions from concept through delivery.
Support platform modernization and migration from legacy data environments to modern Azure, Snowflake, Databricks, lakehouse, warehouse, and data product patterns.
Stay technically engaged through design reviews, solution shaping, reference architectures, and targeted prototypes while enabling teams to execute independently.
Integrate architecture work into delivery planning, including prioritization, estimation, PI planning, backlog readiness, and roadmap execution.

Benefits

Circle K is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
The Company complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act (the ADA) and all state and local disability laws.
Applicants with disabilities may be entitled to a reasonable accommodation under the terms of the ADA and certain state or local laws as long as it does not impose an undue hardship on the Company.
Please inform the Company’s Human Resources Representative if you need assistance completing any forms or to otherwise participate in the application process.
Click below to review information about our company's use of the federal E-Verify program to check work eligibility: In English In Spanish
Our mission at Circle K is to make people's lives a little easier every day.
Our global family of 150,000 people in over 17,300 stores and 27 countries makes that possible for our millions of clients worldwide, which is why we are committed to helping them achieve their goals and grow with us.
We set ourselves apart by our culture and values: in our people and their development, in serving others, what we've built and what we are striving to achieve.
No matter where you come from or where you are heading in your career, there is a place for you to grow at Circle K.
When you grow, we grow - together.