Senior Data Architect

RELOCATION ASSISTANCE:
No relocation assistance available

CLEARANCE TYPE:
None

TRAVEL:
Yes, 10% of the Time

At Northrop Grumman, our employees have incredible opportunities to work on revolutionary systems that impact people's lives around the world today, and for generations to come. Our pioneering and inventive spirit has enabled us to be at the forefront of many technological advancements in our nation's history - from the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, to stealth bombers, to landing on the moon.

We look for people who have bold new ideas, courage and a pioneering spirit to join forces to invent the future, and have fun along the way. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity and bringing your whole self to work — and we have an insatiable drive to do what others think is impossible. Our employees are not only part of history, they're making history.

Northrop Grumman Insights & Intelligence (i2) is seeking a Senior Staff Data Architect with a track record of designing, implementing, and leading enterprise data platforms. The ideal candidate will bring deep experience building and architecting robust lakehouse solutions using Databricks. This technical leader will drive transformational data initiatives, streamline complex data ecosystems, and enable scalable and secure analytics capabilities across the enterprise.

• Develop the enterprise lakehouse architecture strategy from data catalog design to AI data readiness, to metadata management - serving as the foundational platform for enterprise analytics and AI.

• Converge disparate data sources and source systems into an integrated enterprise data foundation.

• Establish data model standardization by setting best practices and technical standards for relational models, schema implementations, and data engineering development.

• Collaborate closely with key stakeholders, including data science, business intelligence, and IT leadership—to ensure that critical data needs are addressed within the architectural roadmap.

• Mentor data engineering teams and foster a culture of innovation, continuous improvement, and accelerated pipeline development in Databricks environments.

• Ensure enterprise-quality performance, security, and compliance across all data initiatives by implementing robust governance, automated testing, and scalable ingestion architectures for source systems.

• Advise technical teams across the organization on data architecture designs and best practices for implementing Databricks data solutions.

• Senior Staff level:
  Must have at least 14 years of relevant experience with a Bachelors degree in computer science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related field; OR 12 years of relevant experience with a Masters degree; OR 10 years of relevant experience with a PhD.

• Must have proven expertise with Databricks and associated technologies (Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, Spark) and hands‑on experience with cloud-native data services (Azure, AWS)

• Must have demonstrated ability to build enterprise‑level data solutions from concept to production, with experience in automation and configuration‑driven development (using languages such as Python, C#, or Scala).

• Must have a strong command of Python and SQL or other similar programming languages.

• Must have proven ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear business outcomes for non‑technical audiences.

• Must have ability to translate complex technical challenges into clear business outcomes and strategies for stakeholders at all organizational levels.

• Experience working with and integrating ERP systems data to Databricks (e.g. SAP, Workday, PLM)

• Experience with data schema and modeling approaches and their tradeoffs (e.g. star, snowflake, data‑vault)

• Experience with governance and permissions design and knowledge of how to engineer scalability deployed with Databricks

Primary Level Salary Range: $ - $

The above salary range represents a general guideline; however, Northrop Grumman considers a number of factors when determining base salary offers such as the scope and responsibilities of the position and the…