Data Architect

Overview

We are seeking a Data Architect to lead the data architecture for a federal modernization initiative supporting permitting and natural resource management systems.

The Data Architect will define and guide implementation of a modern AWS lakehouse that consolidates structured, document, geospatial, and event-driven data from multiple source systems into a governed canonical model. The role will establish architectural patterns for metadata-driven and agentic data engineering, data quality, document processing, GIS integration, and governed data products.

The environment includes Amazon S3, Apache Iceberg, AWS Glue Catalog, DuckDB, Kafka/Amazon MSK, OpenSearch, GeoParquet, and PostGIS.

This position is remote with periodic travel as required.

Duties & Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary architecture authority for the data workstream.
• Define the end-to-end data architecture spanning ingestion, bronze/silver/gold processing, document pipelines, GIS processing, analytical data products, and downstream services.
• Design the lakehouse architecture using Amazon S3, Apache Iceberg, AWS Glue Catalog, and DuckDB.
• Define reusable patterns for batch, API, file, database, CDC, and event-driven ingestion.
• Establish a metadata-driven architecture that supports configuration-based source onboarding and source-to-canonical mappings.
• Define and govern the common canonical data model used to harmonize information across source systems.
• Establish data contracts and standards for lineage, provenance, reconciliation, schema evolution, auditability, and data quality.
• Define architecture patterns for agentic solutions supporting source analysis, mapping, pipeline generation, testing, reconciliation, and quality assurance.
• Establish controls for agentic workflows, including validation, observability, security, deterministic execution, and human review where required.
• Coordinate architecture across structured data, OCR/document processing, vector search, and geospatial data.
• Provide architectural direction and design review across the data engineering, data science, GIS, and content pipeline teams.
• Work with Government stakeholders and technical teams to translate business and domain requirements into scalable data models and services.
• Maintain architecture standards, technical decisions, interface specifications, and implementation guidance.
• Support technical handoff and knowledge transfer to Government and operations teams.

Educational Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related technical discipline.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in data architecture, data engineering, or software engineering, including leadership of modern data platform initiatives.
• Demonstrated experience designing cloud-based data lakehouse or analytical platforms.
• Hands-on experience with DuckDB, Apache Iceberg, SQL, Python, and AWS data services including Amazon S3 and AWS Glue.
• Experience designing medallion-style architectures, canonical data models, and metadata-driven ingestion and transformation frameworks.
• Experience integrating databases, APIs, files, streaming/event sources, and enterprise SaaS applications.
• Experience architecting or implementing agentic or AI-enabled solutions, including orchestration, tool integration, validation, observability, security, and human-in-the-loop controls.
• Strong understanding of data contracts, schema evolution, lineage, provenance, reconciliation, and data quality.
• Experience providing architectural leadership to multidisciplinary technical teams and translating business requirements into scalable technical solutions.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

Bonus Skills

• Experience with Kafka or Amazon MSK and CDC architectures.
• Experience with OpenSearch, vector databases, embeddings, or document retrieval systems.
• Experience with agentic frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, or similar orchestration frameworks.
• Experience designing geospatial data architectures using GeoParquet and PostGIS.
• Experience with Salesforce, ServiceNow, Microsoft Dataverse, or similar enterprise platforms.
• Experience working in the U.S. Federal Government space.
• Experience with permitting, land management, environmental, energy, or natural-resource datasets.