Principal Data Curation Architect

Do you want to help build how a research organization manages, governs, and prepares decades of scientific and engineering data for current and future use?

Are you motivated by building comprehensive solutions from the ground up?

If so, we are seeking a Principal Data Curation Architect to develop and lead the launch and continuous improvement of data management and curation capabilities within a sophisticated research and classified IT environment at JHUAPL!

Our programs have produced decades of datasets across multiple scientific, engineering, and mission domains. Much of this information requires improved organization, documentation, governance, discovery, and lifecycle management to support researchers, mission teams, and emerging AI/ML-enabled applications. This role combines IT project management, data governance, process improvement, technology implementation, stakeholder engagement, and data-curation practices to deliver sustainable data-management capabilities.

On our team, you will work closely with a set of data owners, IT, cybersecurity, security officers, technical teams, and leadership to establish practical standards and processes that make data more discoverable, understandable, governed, and reusable.

As a Principal Data Curation Architect, You Will...

• Lead projects to establish and implement data-management and curation capabilities, including project objectives, scope, schedules, budget estimates, and measures of success.
• Develop, implement and manage end-to-end data pipelines and lifecycle workflows, including data intake, assessment, cleaning, documentation, quality review, versioning, retention, and archiving.
• Lead the inventory and assessment of legacy and active research data, working with data owners managing and enriching raw information so it stays accurate, searchable, and useful over time.
• Create and implement functional data governance processes, roles, responsibilities, standards, and operating procedures.
• Train, teach, and mentor, data owners, and consumers on how to collate, format, document, and curate data for optimal downstream usage and AI/ML readiness.
• Drive the evaluation, selection, configuration, and implementation of data catalogs, metadata-management tools, reporting automation, and new analytics solutions in collaboration with IT and cybersecurity.
• Establish lightweight metadata and documentation standards aligned with FAIR principles and applicable sponsor, security, and data-management expectations.
• Coordinate technical teams and subject-matter experts to prepare and package datasets for downstream research, analytics, and AI/ML use.
• Develop project plans, schedules, status reports, risk registers, and executive-level briefings to advise project leadership on priorities, risks, and resource requirements.
• Find opportunities to improve existing processes, systems, and tools through automation, integration, and technology modernization.
• Develop and maintain standard operating procedures, templates, guidance, and training materials.

You will meet our minimum qualifications if you have...

• A Bachelor's degree in library/information science, data science, scientific research or a related field.
• At least 2 years of professional experience leading technology projects, application/data-management initiatives, or related technical projects
• Demonstrated proficiency in curating large, structured datasets, including data quality assessment, normalization, and traceable documentation of curation actions.
• Demonstrated experience establishing or improving technology processes, workflows, governance practices, or operational capabilities.
• Experience leading multidisciplinary teams involving technical experts, business/mission partners, quality…