Data Architect

About the Role

The Aerospace Corporation’s Digital Innovation Division is seeking an experienced Data Architect to design, govern, and modernize enterprise data capabilities across a complex technical environment. The role will develop scalable data architectures, improve interoperability, enable trusted analytics, and support the organization’s digital transformation goals.

• Develop and maintain enterprise data architecture frameworks, reference architectures, design patterns, and standards.
• Define target-state data architectures that support analytics, AI/ML, digital engineering, mission applications, and enterprise reporting.
• Assess current-state data environments, identify gaps, and develop practical roadmaps for modernization.
• Design architectures for structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data across cloud, on-premises, hybrid, and classified networks.
• Design conceptual, logical, and physical data models for enterprise and mission systems.
• Support integration across legacy systems, data platforms, software factories, analytics environments, and business applications.
• Ensure architecture decisions align with governance, security, compliance, privacy, and mission requirements.
• Advise on data platform capabilities, including data lakes, warehouses, lake houses, catalogs, pipelines, streaming platforms, knowledge graphs, and API layers.
• Architect data foundations that enable reliable AI/ML development, model training, retrieval-augmented generation, advanced analytics, and operational decision support.
• Translate technical architecture concepts into clear guidance for executives, program leaders, engineers, analysts, and data owners.
• Facilitate architecture reviews, working groups, and design sessions.
• Produce clear architecture artifacts, including diagrams, roadmaps, standards, decision records, and implementation guidance.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field (or equivalent work experience).
• 7+ years of experience in data engineering, data architecture, or data operations.
• Significant experience designing enterprise data architectures in complex organizations.
• Strong knowledge of data modeling, data integration, metadata management, data quality, and data governance.
• Experience with modern data platforms such as cloud data warehouses, data lakes, lake houses, relational databases, No
  
  SQL stores, or distributed processing platforms.
• Experience designing APIs, data pipelines, data exchange patterns, or integration architectures.
• Working knowledge of security, access control, compliance, and data protection principles.
• Demonstrated ability to produce architecture artifacts, technical standards, and implementation roadmaps.
• Strong problem‑solving skills, strategic mindset, and ability to design and evolve enterprise‑scale data ecosystems.
• Effective communication skills with both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Proven ability to foster collaboration and knowledge‑sharing across diverse teams.
• Demonstrated innovation, creativity, resourcefulness, and initiative.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance; U.S. citizenship required.

• Advanced degree in STEM or other technical discipline.
• 10+ years of increasingly responsible professional experience in data engineering, data architecture, or data operations, with at least 3 years in a leadership or management role.
• Certifications in cloud (AWS, Azure), Dev Ops, or security (CISSP, CISA).
• Direct mission experience in the national space domain, missile defense, and/or remote sensing.
• Experience with tools such as Databricks, Snowflake, PostgreSQL, Neo4j, Kafka, Airflow, dbt, Collibra, Alation, Informatica, or similar platforms.
• Experience with AI/ML data preparation, feature stores, vector databases, knowledge graphs, or retrieval‑augmented generation architectures.
• Experience supporting classified, cross‑domain, or multi‑network environments.
• Familiarity with Dev Sec Ops , Data Ops, Git Ops, CI/CD, infrastructure‑as‑code, and automated data quality testing.
• Experience with enterprise…