Senior Data Architect

The Senior Data Architect will design and implement scalable data solutions using the latest and advanced technology and toolsets. This role offers the right candidate the rare opportunity to leverage their extensive background in data modeling, database tuning, data repositories, and data pipeline creation to build and maintain a data management platform to support the organization's Data Governance program.

• Lead the design and architecture of end-to-end data solutions, translating business requirements into scalable, secure, and high-performing data architectures.
• Define target-state data architecture and blueprints, including data flows, integration patterns, storage strategies, and consumption layers.
• Establish standard architecture patterns for ingestion, transformation (ETL/ELT), data integration, and data sharing across platforms.
• Architect scalable data pipelines and workflows, optimizing for performance, cost, and reliability.
• Ensure design alignment with cloud-native principles, leveraging modern data platforms for elasticity, resilience, and modularity.
• Incorporate data governance, security, and privacy by design, including access controls, masking, lineage, and compliance requirements.
• Design for interoperability and integration, enabling seamless data exchange across applications, domains, and external systems.
• Lead evaluation and selection of data management technologies in partnership with IT and business stakeholders, ensuring seamless ecosystem integration.
• Collaborate with Enterprise Architecture, Infrastructure, and Application Development teams to define roadmaps, capabilities, and solution strategies.
• Provide architectural oversight for cloud-native data platforms, ensuring scalability, performance, and operational excellence.
• Review and govern solution designs, identifying risks, gaps, and trade-offs while ensuring adherence to enterprise standards.
• Drive innovation through feasibility studies, POCs, and pilot initiatives, validating new technologies and architectural approaches.
• Provide oversight for vendor and third-party solutions, ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture and integration standards.
• Participate in architecture governance forums, contributing to design reviews, approvals, and continuous improvement.
• Mentor and guide junior data architects and engineers, fostering best practices, design excellence, and capability growth.
• Enable AI/ML-driven capabilities by designing data architectures that support scalable experimentation, feature engineering, and model deployment.

• 4+ years of experience in modern data cloud data architecture, or related fields, with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related discipline.
• Proven experience leading the design and delivery of enterprise data solutions, including data warehousing, data management, big data, and data integration initiatives.
• Extensive hands-on expertise in architecting and building end-to-end data platforms, leveraging modern technologies and cloud environments (preferably Microsoft Azure), with experience in cloud-native, multi-cloud, or hybrid architectures.
• Strong ability to translate business requirements into scalable data solutions, with excellent communication skills to articulate complex architectural concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Deep understanding of modern data ecosystems, including data warehouses, data lakes, and lakehouse architectures, with the ability to evaluate and select optimal technologies for ingestion, storage, processing, analytics, APIs, and microservices.
• Hands-on experience with modern data and analytics tools, such as Snowflake, Matillion, Power BI and other industry-leading platforms.
• Experience collaborating with vendors and third-party partners, ensuring successful delivery aligned with enterprise architecture standards.
• Familiarity with unified analytics platforms (e.g., Microsoft Fabric) or similar modern data platforms is highly desirable.
• Strong foundation in data governance, data quality, security, and privacy, with an understanding of regulatory and compliance requirements.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to influence decisions and drive alignment across cross-functional teams.
• Architect modern, scalable data platforms that enable advanced analytics, AI/ML, and Generative AI use cases while ensuring governance, security, and performance.

Base Pay Information

The national base pay range at the end is a good-faith estimate of what Delta Dental may pay for new hires. Actual pay may vary based on Delta Dental’s assessment of the candidate’s knowledge, skills, abilities (KSAs), related experience, education, certifications and ability to meet