Sr Director, Enterprise Data and Architecture

Founded in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed deep-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include the V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, Hivemind Enterprise, and the Hivemind Vision product lines. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific, Shield AI’s technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube. 

The Sr Director of Enterprise Data and Architecture leads the strategy, execution, and governance of enterprise data, integrations, and Enterprise Systems Architecture across the organization. This role is responsible for defining and delivering modern data platformsand enterprise architecture that enables trusted, governed, and accessible data across ERP, CRM, HRIS, Manufacturing, Finance, and other core systems. 

As the owner of corporate data strategy and the enterprise data lakehouse, this leader drives the design and build of scalable data platforms, integration patterns, and architectural standards that support analytics, AI, operational reporting, and digital products. The role ensures that data and technology decisions align with business strategy, regulatory obligations, and security requirements. 

The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in enterprise data architecture, data engineering, and integrations, along with a proven ability to lead cross-functional programs, mature data governance, and build high-performing architecture and data engineering teams. 

What You'll Do:

Enterprise Data Strategy & Governance 

• Develop and own the enterprise data strategy and roadmap, aligning data capabilities with corporate objectives, analytics needs, and digital transformation priorities. 

• Define the vision, operating model, and maturity path for data as a product, including policies for data ownership, stewardship, quality, security, and lifecycle management. 

• Establish and chair cross-functional data governance forums that bring together business, IT, security, and compliance stakeholders to prioritize data initiatives and enforce standards. 

• Set enterprise-wide standards for metadata, master data, and reference data to ensure consistency and interoperability across systems and domains. 

Data Lakehouse & Platform Ownership 

• Own the design, build, and evolution of the corporate data lakehouse, including ingestion pipelines, storage layers, semantic models, and downstream analytics enablement. 

• Lead data engineering and platform teams in delivering reliable, performant, and cost-efficient data platforms that support BI, advanced analytics, AI/ML, and self-service reporting. 

• Define architecture patterns for batch and streaming pipelines, ELT/ETL frameworks, and data orchestration, ensuring resilience, observability, and scalability. 

• Evaluate and select data platform, integration, and analytics technologies; manage vendor relationships and drive adoption of best-in-class tools and practices. 

Integrations & Enterprise Systems Architecture 

• Own the enterprise integration strategy across ERP, CRM, HRIS, Manufacturing, Finance, and other core platforms, including APIs and middleware. 

• Define end-to-end architecture standards and reference architectures that ensure secure, scalable, and loosely coupled integrations between enterprise applications and the data lakehouse.