Senior Solutions Architect (CDP / Data Architecture / Customer.io)

Contract, project-based | US & Canada $85-125/hr USD | Latin America $50-75/hr USD
*Who we are
*
I'm Jon, founder of LifecycleX. We're a lifecycle marketing agency for product-led SaaS companies. Small team, I'm based in Denver, and we're certified partners with both Customer.io and Hightouch.
To give a little context on what we do. Our clients have a real product, real usage data, and a lifecycle program that isn't keeping up with either. Usually the marketing team knows exactly what they want to send, they just can't access the product data to send it, because engineering is heads down on the roadmap and marketing's requests sit in the queue. We come in with our own strategy and our own engineering, fix the data layer, then build the campaigns on top of it.
*The role
*
You own the data layer. Architecture, the customer data platform, and everything that has to be true before a single campaign can launch.
Most of our engagements stall in the same place. The events are named inconsistently, identity resolution is guessy, the warehouse has the answer but nothing syncs it anywhere useful. That’s the problem you solve. Our strategist owns the client relationship and the roadmap, our lifecycle manager builds the campaigns, and you make both possible by designing the model and wiring the data pipelines.
*What you’d own
*
Data architecture - Event schema and tracking plan design, naming conventions, identity resolution, objects vs. attributes vs. traits, what gets tracked and why. You’re designing the model, not inheriting one.
Customer data platform work - Hightouch, Segment, RudderStack, mParticle, or similar. Source and destination configuration, schema governance and enforcement, identity graph setup, replay and recovery when something was tracked wrong for six months.
Warehouse and reverse ETL - SQL and dbt modeling, then syncing those models into the engagement platform through Hightouch or Census. Sync logic, scheduling, field mapping, failure handling.
SDK and API implementation - Web and mobile SDK installs, event forwarding, server-side tracking, webhook endpoints, custom API integrations where no connector exists.
The integration edge of the engagement platform - Customer.io, Braze, or Iterable. Object and relationship models, data imports, API-triggered campaigns, and making sure the right data is in there in the right shape.
Migrations - Moving a client off Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Marketo, or HubSpot. Data mapping, historical record migration, parallel-run validation.
Technical scoping - You size the engineering half of an engagement. Hours, dependencies, and a clear line on what the client’s own engineering team has to own.
Client-facing technical calls - Occasional, not weekly. When a client’s engineering lead asks why we need a specific event or how the identity resolution works, you’re the one who answers.
QA and documentation - Tracking plans, data dictionaries, and architecture docs the next person can actually read.
*What you’d work in
*
Hightouch most days, plus Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, dbt, and whatever warehouse the client happens to run. Customer.io on the destination side. Also Amplitude, Mixpanel, PostHog, Twilio, HubSpot, and Salesforce.
*Being clear on one thing
*
This isn’t a campaign builder role. We have a lifecycle marketing manager who builds journeys, writes the Liquid, and ships the sends. You wouldn’t be in the engagement platform designing branching logic.
You’d be upstream of that, deciding what data exists and making sure it arrives correctly. You need to know the engagement platform well enough to model data for it and debug why a trigger didn’t fire. You don’t need to want to live in it.
*What we’re looking for
*
5+ years across data engineering, analytics engineering, or martech solutions architecture. At least 2 of those supporting B2B SaaS.
Deep hands-on time in a customer data platform. Hightouch, Segment, RudderStack, mParticle, or Twilio Engage. You’ve designed a tracking plan from scratch and enforced it.
Strong SQL and warehouse fluency. You model data, not just query it.
Reverse ETL in production. Hightouch or Census, running real syncs that marketing depends on.
Identity resolution. Anonymous to known, cross-device, merge logic, and what breaks when it’s wrong.
Comfortable in APIs, webhooks, and at least one scripting language. Python or JavaScript.
SDK implementation experience on web or mobile.
Enough familiarity with Customer.io, Braze, or Iterable to model data for it and debug a trigger.
Fluent, natural English. You’ll be on camera with US-based teams, so this one matters.
You can hold a point of view in front of a client’s engineering lead without getting defensive.
Within about 3 hours of US Mountain Time.
Nice to have
dbt at depth. Testing, documentation, and CI.
Product-led growth (PLG) specifically. Free trials, freemium, usage-based expansion.
Product analytics instrumentation. Amplitude, Mixpanel, PostHog.
At least one platform migration owned end to end.
Agency or consulting background.
The setup
Independent contractor.
Work is scoped per client engagement. We agree on hours and timeline before anything starts.
No guaranteed hours today. I’m building a bench ahead of demand, and I’d rather be honest about that than oversell it.
Remote and async for the most part, with a handful of fixed client calls during US business hours.
I’m looking for someone who’s building their own consulting practice and wants a steady technical anchor client.

Skills
Python, JavaScript, SQL, Snowflake, ETL, Salesforce, Documentation

Experience
8+ yrs

Work arrangement
Yes