Principal Data Architect

Established in 2021,
Independence Pet Holdings is a corporate holding company that manages a diverse portfolio of pet health brands and services across North America, including insurance, pet education, loss recovery, and more.

We believe pet insurance is more than a financial product and build solutions to simplify the pet parenting journey, improving pet well‑being. As a leading authority in the pet category, we operate with a full stack of resources, capital, and services to support pet parents. Our multi‑brand and omni‑channel approach includes our own insurance carrier, insurance brands, and partner brands.

In close collaboration with the CDO team, this role leads enterprise data architecture and strategy for IPH, driving the architecture and governance of the Unified data platform and enabling advanced analytics and AI/ML capabilities across all pet insurance and non‑insurance brands.

It combines data platform, architecture, engineering, data governance, and business intelligence architecture to ensure a unified, secure, and scalable data ecosystem.

• Build a unified Customer Data Platform (CDP) across multiple zones/domains/lines of business to enable data monetization through cross‑sell and up‑sell insights and customer journey analytics.
• Drive Gen‑AI/Agentic AI adoption (agents, skills, RAG) with data as foundation.
• Handle non‑standard data from various sources (pet metadata, third‑party data with formatting issues) and transform non‑insurance data into pet insurance actionable insights and vice versa.

• Architect, design, and support / govern the implementation of the Azure‑based enterprise data platform using cloud‑native services.
• Architect a medallion lakehouse (Bronze/Silver/Gold tiers) for structured and unstructured data.
• Enable real‑time streaming and batch processing for analytics and operational insights.
• Architect a multi‑region, multi‑AZ architecture with multiple instances per zone for high availability.
• Ensure unified CDP across multiple zones/domains/lines of business.

• With the CDO team, establish an enterprise data governance framework and implement a data catalog for discovery and lineage.
• Define MDM strategy to ensure a single source of truth for critical data domains (Customer, Product, Policy).
• Implement data quality monitoring and remediation processes.
• Handle non‑standard input data with formatting issues from various sources.
• Build a Customer Data Platform (CDP) for all brands, including enrichment pipelines and analytical models.
• Enable self‑service BI through Power BI and semantic modeling.
• Define architecture for reporting and advanced analytics capabilities.
• Drive data monetization strategies for cross‑sell/up‑sell and customer journey insights.

• Define data integration patterns, pipeline architecture, and API standards.
• Ensure compliance with SOC 2, PCI DSS, and internal security baselines.
• Align with Calandra Toolkit and target architecture standards.

• With the CDO team, develop a future‑state data architecture roadmap aligned with IPH's digital transformation goals.
• Partner with business and technology leaders to drive adoption and maturity of data capabilities.
• Drive organization toward 90% agentic‑driven operations through AI/ML adoption.

As Solution Architect:

• Define high‑level design, scope, and intended outcomes.
• Align to business goals, governance standards, and target architecture (Calandra Toolkit).
• Hand off requirements to Data Architecture.

As Data Architect:

• Translate solution into data models, integrations, security, and governance patterns.
• Validate scalability, regulatory, compliance, and long‑term roadmap alignment.
• Produce clear technical specs for engineering.
• Conduct “Solution Architecture + Data Architecture” review in collaboration with the CDO team.
• Support implementation, design, and go‑live.
• Ensure performance, security, and governance compliance.
• Ensure reusability and standards compliance.
• Ensure required fixes are addressed before proceeding.