Senior Data Architect

About the role

The Senior Data Architect is a strategic member of Catalight's Data & Analytics team, responsible for designing and maintaining the enterprise data architecture that underpins business intelligence, data engineering, and AI/ML capabilities across the organization.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain the enterprise data architecture vision, blueprint, and roadmap, ensuring alignment with Catalight's organizational strategy and technology landscape.
• Design scalable, secure, and performant data models, data flows, and integration patterns across source systems, data platforms, and consumption layers.
• Establish architectural standards, frameworks, and best practices for data storage, integration, and consumption across AWS and Azure cloud environments.
• Own the design and evolution of Catalight's Snowflake data warehouse architecture, ensuring it supports current and future business intelligence and AI/ML needs.
• Evaluate and recommend emerging data technologies, tools, and platforms to continuously modernize Catalight's data ecosystem.
• Serve as the primary architectural liaison between the Data & Analytics team and enterprise technology stakeholders.
• Understand, recommend, and implement the most effective data design to improve data quality, governance, and usability.

Data Governance & Quality

• Partner closely with the Data Governance Manager to design and enforce enterprise data governance frameworks, policies, and standards appropriate for a healthcare data environment.
• Define and maintain data dictionaries, metadata standards, and data lineage documentation to ensure organizational transparency and regulatory compliance.
• Ensure data architecture design supports HIPAA compliance and other applicable healthcare data privacy and security requirements.
• Establish data quality frameworks and standards, working with the Senior Data Engineer to ensure implementation within pipeline and ETL/ELT workflows.
• Champion a culture of responsible data stewardship across the organization.

AI/ML Architecture & Enablement

• Design and govern data architecture that supports AI/ML application development, model training, and deployment pipelines.
• Collaborate with data science and analytics stakeholders to ensure the enterprise data architecture provides well-structured, accessible, and high-quality data for AI/ML use cases.
• Define architectural patterns for AI/ML data sourcing, feature engineering, and model operationalization.
• Stay current on emerging AI/ML data architecture trends and proactively recommend architectural improvements to support evolving AI/ML capabilities.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement

• Partner with the Senior Data Engineer to ensure architectural designs are translated into effective, scalable technical implementations.
• Collaborate with business stakeholders to understand data needs and requirements, translating them into architectural solutions that deliver measurable value.
• Work alongside the Data Governance Manager to align governance policies with architectural design decisions.
• Communicate architectural vision, decisions, and trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Contribute to enterprise technology planning and roadmap discussions as the data architecture subject matter expert.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Architecture, or a related field preferred; or 8+ years of experience in data architecture, data engineering, or a related discipline in lieu of a degree.
• Demonstrated expertise in enterprise data architecture, including data modeling, data integration design, and data governance frameworks.
• Hands-on experience designing and governing Snowflake data warehouse architecture.
• Proficiency in SQL and experience with advanced data modeling techniques.
• Experience working in or designing data systems for healthcare or other regulated data environments, with knowledge of HIPAA and data privacy requirements.
• Proven ability to design data systems that support business intelligence and reporting platforms, including Tableau.
• Excellent verbal and writing communication skills; frequent proofreading and checking documents for accuracy.