Principal Data Architect-Remote

Overview

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Job Overview:
The Principal IT Solutions Data Architect leads end-to-end data architecture on AWS, leveraging Databricks for computing, governance, and platform evolution, defines data product patterns, domain models, and best practices, partnering with engineering, analytics, security, and business teams to deliver resilient, high-performance, governed data solutions.

A role in Information Technology at UNFI involves being a part of the transformation of food for all through many innovative technology products such as myUNFI, our customer ordering platform or our warehouse management systems that optimize service. You will have an opportunity to be a part of the technology journey to transform food for all through collaboration and building solutions across teams that directly contribute to our OneUNFI strategy.

Roles include network automation, infrastructure unification and modernization, data services and analytics, and digital offering.

• Enterprise Architecture

• Own the enterprise data architecture vision and roadmap across batch, streaming, ML, and BI workloads on AWS + Databricks.
• Establish reference architectures, canonical models, and standards for medallion/Lakehouse design (Bronze/Silver/Gold), Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, and data product contracts.
• Lead design for high throughput ingestion (CDC, streaming, file, API) and domain data products (supply chain, commercial, finance) with SLOs for freshness, quality, and cost.
• Define governance-by-design: data classification, lineage, access patterns (attribute- and purpose-based), privacy, retention, and audit using Unity Catalog and AWS services.
• Architect scalable, cost-efficient processing: autoscaling clusters/SQL warehouses, optimized Delta design (Z-Order, OPTIMIZE, clustering), photon-aware pipelines, job orchestration.
• Drive interoperability with SAP: define patterns for SAP extract/CDC (e.g., ODP, SLT, SDI), model alignment with SAP Business Data Cloud/Datasphere, and harmonized semantics.
• Design and review near real-time data flows (Spark Structured Streaming, Delta Live Tables, Auto Loader, Kafka/Kinesis/MSK) for operational analytics and event-driven use cases.
• Champion data quality/observability: great expectations/Deque, Delta expectations, lineage, and SLAs with incident management and Fin Ops guardrails.
• Partner with Info Sec to implement platform security: IAM, Lakehouse permissions, token/secret management, private networking, encryption, and data masking tokenization patterns.
• Collaborate with analytics and data science to productionable features, ML/AI workloads, and vector/semantic search where appropriate, ensuring reproducibility and MLOps readiness.

• Strategic Leadership and Coaching

• Provides strategic advice on project costs, design concepts, or design changes included risks and assessment of decisions
• Communicate project information to senior stakeholders that includes technical reporting and high visibility presentations
• Train data engineers in new concepts and AI knowledge

Job Requirements:

Education/

Certifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, systems analysis, or a related study.

Experience:

• 10+ years in data architecture, including 5+ years designing at enterprise scale in cloud data platforms.
• Hands-on expertise with Databricks (Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, SQL Warehouses, Spark, DLT/Workflows, ML Stack) and AWS core services (S3, Glue, Lambda, EMR or MSK/Kinesis, Step Functions, IAM, Cloud Watch).
• Strong data modeling experience across operational, analytical, and semantic layers: 3NF, data vault, dimensional/star, and data product contract design with tools like Erwin, ER Studio.
• Proven track record building resilient streaming and batch data pipelines with performance tuning, cost optimization, and observability.
• Experience with SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP Datasphere) and SAP data integration (ODP/SLT, CDS views, BTP services), or prior SAP BW/ERP data models.

Knowledge/Skills/Abilities

• Deep understanding of governance, security, and privacy: RBAC/ABAC, PII handling, masking/tokenization, retention, lineage, and access approvals.
• Presentation skills that include all levels within organization
• Excellent stakeholder engagement; ability to convert business outcomes into clear architecture options and trade-offs; strong documentation and standards leadership.
• Familiarity with ML/AI on Databricks (Feature Store, Model Serving, vector search) and MLOps patterns (CI/CD, model lineage, governance).
• Exceptional interpersonal skills in areas such as teamwork, facilitation and negotiation
• Good judgment is required for this position as there may be times when direct supervision may not be immediately available.

Remote Role:
This position is classified as remote where the associate will perform remote work from their primary residence. Remote associates are welcome to work from the office but are not required to do so. While remote…