Lead Data Architect

POSITION TITLE:

Lead Data Architect

This role is not eligible for employment visa sponsorship

This position is available to Virginia residents as Richmond or Lynchburg, VA hybrid in-office applicants or remote applicants residing in states/locations in the following states:
Virginia, North Carolina, Washington DC and Maryland.

* Hybrid in-office would be required if you reside within 50 miles of our Richmond or Lynchburg, VA office. Required in-office days are Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

You will be influencing and communicating to business stakeholders how the proposed solution architecture implements the data architecture and balances time and cost to build the solution with business value.

You will be acting as a change agent as business and IT stakeholders have not used a data architecture in the past, and you will need to create awareness and desire to implement the data architecture.

Because the reference architecture and core technologies are already established, this solution architect position focuses on applying the data architecture to projects and data products to create solution architecture diagrams and patterns, defining and leading the creation of reusable frameworks and standards across projects, and mentoring teams on how to implement solutions effectively.

• Evaluate proposed project and data product scope, including delivery timeline, functional trade-offs, cost considerations, and expected business value.
• Translate business requirements into solution architectures aligned to the reference architecture, including infrastructure, data modeling, integration, and coding design considerations.
• Build alignment on proposed solution architectures and define phased implementation approaches that deliver early business value.
• Guide data engineering leads, data modelers, infrastructure specialists, and other team members on what must be designed, built, and tested to implement the solution successfully.
• Lead or support proofs of concept to validate new design patterns, technical approaches, or product features before broader implementation.
• Participate throughout the SDLC to help teams implement solution designs and meet business requirements and architecture objectives.
• Use feedback from delivery teams and stakeholders to improve future designs, frameworks, and practices that accelerate delivery and business value realization.
• Establish reusable detailed design patterns that can be adopted across multiple projects, including incubating new patterns through POCs or targeted design work.

• Project estimates with assumptions and estimating factors
• Solution architecture diagrams
• Decision trees on what technology or feature to use based on use cases
• High level data model diagrams
• High level data pipeline architecture diagrams
• Alignment on coding standards and re-usable functions that should be built and shared by a project
• Best practices and materials that project teams can use to align their build to the architecture, designs and re-usable frameworks
• Impact / Value Add Business users achieve the business value as a result of the solution design and build
• Solutions align to the architecture so other projects can leverage the solution built by a previous project
• Integration of enterprise data so more insights can be produced
• Ownership Ownership will be assigned to a business unit, function or set of common data products so your influence on driving architect adoption can be measured.

Ownership will be assigned to a business unit, function or set of common data products so your influence on driving architect adoption can be measured.

This role collaborates with business stakeholders, program and product leads, architects, data engineering leads, infrastructure and cloud teams, and other delivery partners.

Desire to be a change agent in a data transformation program.

• Communicate clearly with technical teams, business stakeholders, and leadership to explain architecture decisions, trade-offs, and implementation direction.
• Influence cross-functional stakeholders by building shared understanding,…