Data Platform Architect

Aerospace is at a turning point — costs are rising, supply chains are strained, and old ways of building can’t keep up. At Neon Aero, we’re breaking that mold. We move fast, think big, and combine start-up agility with aerospace expertise to design, build, and scale aircraft in ways the industry has never seen. Our team leverages automation, AI-driven tools, and a fully connected digital backbone to accelerate innovation and reduce barriers to production.

Here, you won’t just take a job — you’ll help reinvent how the world flies. If you’re ready to solve complex problems, push technology further, and work alongside some of the brightest minds in aerospace, this is your chance to make a real impact.

Neon is building the next generation of aerospace systems as a Tier-1 supplier—AI-native, digitally integrated, and compliance-ready from day one. We’re moving fast, but we don’t do “move fast and break things.” We do speed with rigor: model-based engineering, an integrated digital thread, and first-pass quality. 

As our Data Platform Architect, you’ll own Neon’s enterprise data foundation across engineering, manufacturing, and business domains. You’ll design the integration backbone, architect the enterprise lakehouse, enable centralized analytics, and establish the governance standards that all downstream AI/ML workloads must respect. 

This is a hands-on architecture role. For the first 3–6 months, you’ll operate as a solo principal—defining reference architectures and shipping the first critical integrations and data products—then scale into a small team. 

Why This Role Matters:  

In most organizations, integrations grow organically and data fragments across tools. At Neon, data is the backbone of the digital thread. Without a strong data architecture, “digital engineering” turns into disconnected systems and brittle one-off pipelines. This role ensures Neon runs on a governed, interoperable, compliant foundation—so engineering, manufacturing, and business operate as one cohesive, AI-native aerospace enterprise. 

You will get to:  

Integration & Digital Thread Architecture 

• Define and implement the integration backbone across Neon’s enterprise systems (engineering, manufacturing, business).
• Establish interoperability frameworks (APIs, OSLC patterns, middleware, event-driven pipelines).
• Own API governance standards (versioning, contracts, documentation, lifecycle) and event schema governance.
• Ensure end-to-end traceability across the business. 

Data Infrastructure & Lakehouse 

• Architect and deploy Neon’s enterprise lakehouse, including environment strategy for mixed deployment needs.
• Define ingestion pipelines, transformation frameworks, and enterprise data modeling conventions.
• Establish data quality, lineage, and observability standards.
• Build and operate curated “gold” datasets and shared semantic models to support centralized analytics. 

Governance & Standards 

• Define standards for data management, integration practices, metadata, cataloging, and access patterns.
• Partner with IT infrastructure, infosec, and compliance to implement controls, auditability, and platform reliability.
• Publish playbooks and reference implementations for data product onboarding and system integration. 

Leadership & Collaboration 

• Act as Neon’s subject matter expert for data architecture and integrations across the digital thread.
• Co-lead data readiness for AI/ML use cases, with data steering prioritization and acceptance criteria.
• Mentor engineers as the team scales. 

What you’ll Bring:  

• Bachelor’s or master’s in computer science, data engineering, systems engineering, or related field preferred; relevant professional experience may be accepted in lieu of a degree.
• Minimum of 8 years of experience in data architecture, systems integration, or platform engineering.
• Proven expertise with data lakehouse technologies (Snowflake, Databricks, or equivalent).
• Strong background in API design and integration frameworks (OSLC, REST, GraphQL, event streaming).
• Hands-on proficiency with at least one modern programming language (Python, Rust, Java, or similar).
• Experience building governed data