Director, Data Platform Solution Architect; GCP – Houston Hybrid

Director, Data Platform Solutions (GCP) - US Citizen or Green Card Only

Location: Houston, Texas | Hybrid

We are seeking a strategic and highly technical Director, Data Platform Solutions (GCP) to lead the vision, architecture, and enterprise enablement of scalable, secure, and business-focused data, analytics, and AI/ML solutions on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

This is a senior leadership role with high visibility across Technology Executive Leadership. The Director will define enterprise data platform strategy, establish architectural standards, and guide cross-functional teams in delivering modern, cloud-native data solutions that power analytics, operational reporting, advanced analytics, data science, and AI/ML workloads.

The ideal candidate is a recognized subject matter expert in GCP data services and AI/ML architectures with a strong track record of influencing executive stakeholders and driving enterprise-wide adoption of modern data platform capabilities.

• Define and drive the enterprise data platform vision and roadmap on GCP.
• Design end-to-end data architectures leveraging GCP services, including Big Query, Cloud Storage, Pub/Sub, Dataflow, Dataproc, Cloud Composer, Spanner, Bigtable, Alloy
  
  DB, and Looker.
• Establish standardized architectural patterns for data ingestion, processing, storage, sharing, and consumption across batch, real-time, CDC, streaming, and federated use cases.
• Architect secure and scalable data sharing frameworks within Big Query (authorized views, federation services).

• Oversee architecture across the full data lifecycle: ingestion, transformation, storage optimization, metadata management, quality, observability, security, and cost efficiency.
• Define and enforce architectural standards aligned with enterprise architecture, data strategy, and governance policies.
• Drive Data Management Services architecture, including Data Governance, Data Quality, and Master Data Management (MDM) platforms such as Alation, DBT, STIBO MDM, and Open Text Content Management.
• Maintain architectural integrity and documentation in enterprise tools such as LeanIX.

• Partner with AI/MLOps teams to design integration points between data platforms and model lifecycle management, including model registry and governance.
• Enable streaming, event-driven, and real-time analytics architectures to support advanced AI/ML and agentic AI workloads.
• Ensure platform readiness for scalable analytics and AI innovation.

• Build and manage architectural decision frameworks and design standards across GCP environments.
• Collaborate with Cybersecurity, Fin Ops, Cloud Governance, AI Governance, Enterprise Architecture, and Infrastructure teams to gain alignment and approvals.
• Support and advise teams on PoCs, pilot initiatives, and production deployments through the Architecture Center of Excellence processes.
• Lead data platform strategy in M&A onboarding scenarios, ensuring scalable integration for acquisitions, fold-in, and divestiture use cases.

• Ensure performance, reliability, scalability, and cost optimization across the data platform ecosystem.
• Partner with Dev Ops to implement CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), and observability standards.
• Mentor and develop architecture teams, driving strong documentation practices, technical debt management, and tech stack rationalization.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and continuously modernize the enterprise data platform.

• 10+ years of experience in Data Architecture, Cloud Architecture, or Data Engineering, with a deep focus on Google Cloud Platform.
• Deep expertise in GCP data services, including Big Query, Cloud Storage, Pub/Sub, Kafka, Dataflow/Beam, Cloud Composer, Dataproc, and Looker/LookML.
• Strong understanding of data acquisition patterns (CDC, batch, streaming, real-time, federated architectures).
• Expertise in logical, physical, dimensional, and semantic data modeling.
• Experience integrating data platforms with AI/ML…