Lead Architect - Enteprise Data

Windval Technology Solutions LLC is a modern advisory consulting firm operating at the intersection of management consulting and technology expertise—spanning infrastructure, data, security, and artificial intelligence. Extensive experience and depth of technical knowledge support exceptional technical delivery services that enable IT organizations to optimize existing investments, integrate and operationalize new technologies, and deliver new service capabilities that transform their business. The firm and our specialist teams are dedicated to client success and producing positive outcomes—enabling IT leaders, strengthening teams, and driving measurable progress in the objectives that matter most.

At Windval you’ll find that we value the experience of our team and encourage free sharing of knowledge, opinions, and recommendations. Collaboration and communication are paramount in our work, and we strive to deliver fresh insights and effective solutions for our clients. Windval is a team of life-long learners who maintain a passion for resolving complex problems for our clients. We run engagements on a simple principle: architects own more than just designs, they stay involved and ensure that solutions are implemented and actually work. We don't hand a deck to an implementation team and leave. That principle is what this role exists to carry.

About the role

The Lead Architect is our most senior technical practitioner. This role is defined by two things above all else: deep technical expertise and a hands-on approach. Everything else about the job follows from those two core attributes.

• Deep technical expertise means you can go several layers below the diagram. You thoroughly understand the data model. You know how to assemble data to support new AI development initiatives. You know how the technology stack works, how it gets built and deployed in the CI/CD workflow, the measures employed to create redundancy and high availability, the mechanics of the data flow pipeline, how the identity model actually resolves, and are an expert at troubleshooting issues or surprise failures. You've been in the trenches implementing the technology, not just creating specs on a whiteboard. When a client's senior engineer pushes back on your design, you can meet them at their level and either defend it or change it on the merits.
• Hands-on means you stay in the environment. You're in the console, in the config, in the migration runbook, on the cutover bridge when it matters. You don't require a team between you and the work in order to be effective. Client presence, proposal work, and mentoring are all part of this role. We are seeking architects who can earn the respect of engineers first and foremost. That credibility quickly earns the confidence of client executives as well.

Responsibilities

Deep technical ownership

• Own end-to-end solution architecture for our enterprise data domain
• Bring strong expertise, built through direct hands-on experience, in many of the most popular enterprise data platform technologies (e.g., AWS and/or Microsoft Azure storage, data, and analytics offerings; Databricks; Snowflake; etc.)
• Understand and apply key reference architectures and best practices, leading the team to avoid common anti-patterns and design pitfalls
• Get into unfamiliar client environments and understand how they actually work, including the parts nobody documented and the parts the documentation gets wrong
• Build, configure, test, and troubleshoot alongside the delivery team—proofs of concept, reference implementations, migration tooling, failure-mode testing
• Serve as the top escalation point for the hardest technical problems on an engagement, including ones well outside your original scope
• Own technical aspects of cutover planning and be present for execution and post-go-live stabilization

Design that survives contact

• Assess complex environments quickly and produce roadmaps that sequence remediation, modernization, and net-new capability on a single plan rather than competing ones
• Design solutions that integrate with the client's existing enterprise foundations and control environment, not around them
• Make trade-off decisions in writing—cost, risk, timeline, operability—and document the reasoning so it survives past your involvement
• Pressure-test your own designs against failure, scale, and audit

Raising the technical bar

• Quickly learn and thoroughly understand client data models, across a variety of business domains, and effectively communicate with clients in the language of their business
• Set technical standards and review the work of consultants and client engineers, teaching through the review rather than just correcting it
• Mentor consultants and delivery leads by working next to them on real problems
• Develop reusable patterns, assessment frameworks, and reference implementations that make the next engagement faster than the last
• Partner with sales and delivery leadership on technical approach, estimates, and risk assumptions—including telling us when something shouldn't be promised

Client leadership

• Function as the trusted technical advisor to client leaders—CIOs, CISOs, VPs of Infrastructure—and hold your position under pressure but also be receptive to feedback and respectful in addressing client questions, challenges, or concerns
• Translate in both directions: explain an architecture to a steering committee, and turn a regulatory or business constraint into engineering requirements

Requirements

• 10+ years in enterprise IT, including substantial time doing the implementation work yourself—not just managing people who did it
• Deep, current, demonstrable expertise in many of the most popular enterprise data platform technologies, such as: AWS and/or Microsoft Azure storage, data, and analytics offerings; Databricks; Snowflake; etc.
• Certifications that reflect expertise gained during direct, real-world experience are a plus
• Curiosity and eagerness to continue to learn and master new technologies outside current areas of expertise
• Architectures you designed and personally helped build, run in production today
• Ability to work directly in the environment—CLI, console, infrastructure as code, scripting, log analysis, data migration and transformation pipelines, data protection measures, etc. (as the domain demands)
• Track record influencing senior client stakeholders without formal authority
• Strong written communication; you can produce an assessment or roadmap that stands on its own, including the ability to create and deliver your own clear, concise and compelling PowerPoint presentations
• Willingness to travel to client sites as engagements require

Preferred Qualifications

• Blended experience of employer company types and roles across enterprise IT client organizations, technology manufacturers, technology solution providers and service providers
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, mathematics or related experience

What we're not looking for

• Architects whose accountability ends at the design document
• People who've been outside of the technology for five years and are coaching from memory
• Anyone who needs a delivery team between themselves and the work
• A certification chaser without real world experience

How We'll Evaluate

Expect a substantive technical conversation, not a credentials review. We will ask you to walk through an architecture you designed—in depth, including what you got wrong and how you found out. We'll ask how you'd approach a real environment with incomplete information. Candidates who can only discuss their work at the summary level don't advance.

Benefits

• Unlimited vacation policy and paid holidays
• 401(k) with employer match
• Health / dental / vision insurance

Schedule

Windval is a remote-first organization and offers a flexible, work from home environment.

Pay

Windval provides a competitive salary + commission + benefits compensation package commensurate with the candidate’s professional capability and experience.