Data Architect

Responsibilities:
Define and own the enterprise data architecture strategy, principles, standards, and technology roadmap.
Design scalable and highly available data platforms, data lakes, data warehouses, and lakehouse architectures.
Develop architecture for batch and real-time data ingestion, processing, transformation, and integration.
Evaluate and recommend appropriate data technologies, platforms, frameworks, and tools based on business and technical requirements.
Design robust data models, including conceptual, logical, and physical data models for operational and analytical workloads.
Drive implementation of ETL/ELT pipelines, data integration frameworks, and data quality solutions.
Architect solutions across cloud data platforms such as AWS/Azure/GCP and modern data technologies.
Define data architecture patterns for analytics, reporting, Data Science, AI/ML, and GenAI use cases.
Establish standards for data governance, security, privacy, metadata management, data lineage, and access control.
Work closely with Data Engineering, Data Science, Product, Application Engineering, and Business teams to ensure alignment between business objectives and data architecture.
Identify opportunities to improve data performance, scalability, reliability, cost efficiency, and operational excellence.
Lead architecture reviews and provide technical guidance for complex data engineering initiatives.
Mentor senior engineers and architects and contribute to building a strong data engineering and architecture practice.
Stay current with emerging technologies in cloud, distributed systems, data platforms, AI/ML, and GenAI and assess their applicability to the organisation.
Requirements:
14-18 years of overall experience in Data Engineering, Data Architecture, or related areas, with significant experience in architecture and technical leadership.
Strong experience designing large-scale, distributed data platforms and enterprise data architectures.
Strong understanding of data modelling, data warehousing, data lakes, lakehouse architecture, and distributed data processing.
Hands-on experience with technologies such as Spark, Kafka, Airflow, Databricks, Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, or equivalent platforms.
Strong programming experience in Python, Java, or Scala.
Strong knowledge of SQL and database technologies, including relational and NoSQL databases.
Experience with cloud platforms, preferably AWS, with a strong understanding of cloud-native data services.
Experience designing real-time and batch data processing architectures.
Strong understanding of microservices, APIs, distributed systems, and event-driven architectures.
Experience with data governance, security, quality, lineage, metadata, and compliance.
Strong understanding of data architecture patterns and best practices for scalability, availability, performance, and cost optimisation.
Experience working with CI/CD, DevOps, infrastructure automation, and observability for data platforms.
Excellent problem-solving, communication, stakeholder management, and technical leadership skills.
Good to Have:
Experience architecting data platforms for AI/ML and Generative AI applications.
Knowledge of Vector Databases, RAG architectures, Knowledge Graphs, and AI data platforms.
Experience with Data Mesh, Data Fabric, or modern lakehouse architectures.
Experience with technologies such as Delta Lake, Iceberg, dbt, Kubernetes, Terraform, or equivalent.
Experience in building enterprise-scale platforms in a high-growth product/SaaS environment.
Prior experience leading architecture initiatives across multiple engineering teams.
Strong architecture and system-design mindset with the ability to balance long-term strategy and immediate business needs.
Ability to simplify complex data problems and design scalable, pragmatic solutions.
Strong ownership and ability to influence technical decisions across teams.
A hands-on technology leader who can design, review, and guide implementation rather than working purely at a conceptual level.
Strong focus on engineering excellence, reliability, security, and measurable business impact.

Experience
14-18 yrs