Principal Data Architect

Wintrust provides community and commercial banking, specialty finance and wealth management services through its 16 bank charters and nine non-bank businesses. Wintrust delivers the sophisticated solutions of a large bank while staying true to the relationship-focused, personalized service of our community banking roots. We serve clients in all 50 states with more than 200 branch banking locations in Illinois, southwestern Florida, northwestern Indiana, west Michigan and southern Wisconsin and commercial banking offices in Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, Mich., and in key branch banking locations throughout Illinois. Our people are the heart of our business and we are proud to rank consistently as a top place to work. Wintrust is a $66 billion financial institution based in Rosemont, Illinois, and listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol “WTFC.”

Job Title:                         

Principal Data Architect

Location:                        

Job location –Rosemont, IL- The position is based in Rosemont, IL, but remote work anywhere in the U.S. will be considered.  30 days of national travel is required.

Responsibilities:

The Principal Data Architect is a key position within the Data Management team, responsible for the design, development, test, and implementation of best-in-class Data Integration solutions using MuleSoft, Azure, Java, Automation tools like Ansible, Terraform etc for the organization. This architecture role will be engaged in all phases of the Data Integration lifecycle and will be called upon to mentor less experienced team members as necessary.

• Design, develop and maintain data solutions using best practices.
• Architect complex data integration solutions using modern practices like APIs, messaging buses, and event streaming platforms to connect disparate data sources.
• Develop a long-term, reliable vision and roadmap for how data will be collected, stored, managed, and utilized across the entire organization to achieve business objectives.
• Define and implement policies, procedures, and standards for data quality, consistency, security, and compliance (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA).
• Lead the creation of conceptual, logical, and physical data models to illustrate how data elements relate to each other and guide database design.
• Research, evaluate, and recommend appropriate data technologies, tools, and platforms (cloud-based or on-premise) that align with business needs and future scalability requirements.
• Continuously monitor and optimize existing data infrastructure for performance, security, and cost-efficiency.
• Design and implement robust CI/CD pipelines to automate the building, testing, and deployment of data solutions. This includes automating infrastructure provisioning using

Infrastructure as Code (IaC).

• Provide architectural analysis for data integrations including definition of standards for scalability, security, error handling, and auditing.
• Lead the design and evolution of hybrid infrastructure, blending cloud and on-premise systems into a unified, scalable, and reliable data platform.
• Define and enforce data governance policies and security controls across all data and infrastructure, ensuring compliance with privacy regulations.
• Building data ingestion and integration pipelines using tools like Apache Kafka or ETL technologies.
• Assist in estimating and scoping of all data integration-related implementations.
• Act as an agent of change, fostering a culture of cross-functional collaboration between data, development, and operations teams.
• Design and build API security standards using Noname/Akamai.
• Integrate different security solutions like Checkmarx using Azure CICD.
• Analyze the requirements and prepare technical specifications and detail level design documents.
• Drive the Design, Development & Deployment of data flows.
• Implement DevOps Best practices for all data integrations, participate in all types of testing, including unit testing, point-to-point testing, end-to-end testing &UAT.
• Support/enhance/create integrations to address business requirements, ensuring all related processes meets best-in-class standards offering high performance.
• Designing, prototyping, and delivering API integration and applications in varied deployment models - cloud based on premise and hybrid.
• Build continuous improvement process for complex data systems, tools & reports.
• Serves as resource to internal, offshore team & third-party team members on escalated issues, analyzing and designing specifications for less experienced team members.
• Pursues self-development and effective relationships with others b