MDM, System Architect

The MDM System Architect is a senior technical leader on the MDM Solution Teams responsible for translating complex Master Data Management (MDM) epics into robust, scalable, and compliant system level designs across the MDM Product Platform—supporting VA Profile, VADIR/VIS, and HDR. Working within Agile Release Trains (ARTs), this role drives architecture decisions, build vs buy evaluations, prototyping, and backlog elaboration while orchestrating dependencies across Architecture, Development Scrum, Data Hydration, Shared Service Dev Ops & Quality, Release & Compliance, Customer Success, and Decision Support Reporting.

• Deliver current state assessments, identify gaps and develop implementation roadmaps for the MDM system.
• Decompose large, complex MDM epics (e.g., integrating VA Profile identity data with HDR health data) into alternative solution approaches; define system‑level architectures emphasizing scalability, performance, reliability, and compliance.
• Align designs with MDM data models, survivorship/matching rules, and domain‑specific requirements in partnership with the Architecture Team and Product SME.
• Author architecture decision records (ADRs), interface contracts, sequence diagrams, and context maps for platform‑wide reuse.

• Lead evaluations of custom development versus third‑party products/tools, assessing total cost of ownership, risk, compliance (e.g., PHI/PII, HIPAA), VA policy alignment, interoperability with VA systems, and operational fit.
• Present recommendations and trade‑offs to the Program Team and Release & Compliance Team; define pilot/proof criteria and success measures.

• Create and maintain Solution Intent documentation, capturing the business, technical, data, and non‑functional requirements with input from Technical Analysts, Customer Success, and Strategy & Communications.
• Ensure Veteran focused outcomes are reflected in acceptance criteria, error handling, data quality thresholds, and user experience considerations.

• Produce early user and technical prototypes, domain and data models, process/experience models, and integration stubs to validate feasibility and data flows.
• Collaborate with Development Scrum Teams and the Decision Support Reporting Team to test ingestion, matching/survivorship, golden record creation, lineage, and analytics.
• Develop data models to meet business requirements and SLAs.

• Break down epics into features and actionable user stories, maintaining a prioritized, groomed backlog with clear DoD/DoR, non‑functional requirements, and testability.
• Partner with the Scrum Master, Tech Lead, Developers, and Testers to ensure clarity, technical feasibility, and end‑to‑end traceability.

• Identify, communicate, and mitigate cross‑team risks and dependencies (e.g., Data Hydration for data availability; Shared Service Dev Ops & Quality for CI/CD, environments, and test frameworks).
• Coordinate with the Release Train Engineer (RTE) on release planning, readiness, and cross‑ART alignment.

• Operate within SAFe/ART ceremonies (PI Planning, System Demos, Inspect & Adapt), ensuring architecture runway, increment objectives, and roadmap alignment with the Product Manager and RTE.
• Monitor delivery health (velocity, quality, compliance gates) and drive continuous improvement.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• 8+ years of software engineering or data platform experience, with 5+ years architecting enterprise MDM solutions (identity resolution, matching/survivorship, data stewardship, golden record).
• Hands‑on expertise with MDM platforms (e.g., Informatica MDM/MDG, Reltio, IBM Info Sphere MDM, or equivalent), data modeling, and data governance.
• Hands‑in experience with the design, development and implementation of data schemas for the large applications.
• Strong integration experience: REST/Graph
  
  QL APIs, event streaming (Kafka), ETL/ELT, messaging, and…