Senior Data & AI Solutions Architect

Role Description

The Senior Data & AI Solutions Architect is a strategic, hands-on technical expert responsible for designing and delivering enterprise data and artificial intelligence solutions across the Knights of Columbus’ core business lines of Life Insurance, Investments, Membership, and Charities. This is a senior level individual contributor role who will be responsible for operating as a domain authority and trusted technical partner driving outcomes through influence, collaboration, and deep expertise.

Reporting directly to the Director of Applied AI & Data Science, this role partners closely with business leaders, data analysts, data movement engineers, infrastructure teams, and peer architects to translate business needs into architectures that are secure, governed, and built to scale. The Senior Data & AI Solutions Architect plays a critical role in continuing to modernize the Knights of Columbus’ data landscape including bridging legacy mainframe and DB2 platforms with a cloud and AI-enabled ecosystem that includes Snowflake, PostgreSQL, Talend, Microsoft Copilot, Snowflake Cortex, and enterprise large language models. This foundation is essential to enabling Deep Research LLM and agentic AI capabilities across the organization.

Core Responsibilities

• Define and govern enterprise Data & AI architecture across legacy, cloud, and AI-native platforms.
• Architect hybrid data integration across mainframe, DB2, Snowflake, Postgres, Talend, and event streaming.
• Design and deliver LLM and agentic AI solutions using Snowflake Cortex, Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI Service, Copilot Studio, and orchestration frameworks.
• Establish RAG, vector database, and embedding strategies for enterprise research and analytics.
• Coordinate the continual modernization of ETL and Lakehouse architecture.
• Enable Snowflake governance: RBAC, dynamic masking, row-level security, encryption.
• Ensure compliance with OSFI, SOX, NAIC, PIPEDA/GDPR, SEC/state insurance regulations.
• Partner with business, risk, compliance, legal, IT, Information Security, and vendors as the lead technical advisor.

Qualifications

• 3+ years hands-on Snowflake experience (Snowpark, Cortex, data sharing).
• 3+ years delivering production LLM / GenAI solutions (RAG, agents, fine-tuning).
• Proven legacy-to-cloud migration experience involving IBM DB2 or equivalent.
• Experience with Talend, modern data integration, and real-time ingestion.
• Knowledge of relational (e.g., PostgreSQL), NoSQL, NewSQL, and vector/LLM databases.
• Demonstrated experience with legacy-to-cloud data migration involving IBM DB2 or equivalent mainframe/relational systems.
• Proven delivery of agentic AI systems or multi-model orchestration pipelines in enterprise environments.

Education

• 12+ years in data architecture, data engineering, or enterprise architecture.
• 5+ years in financial services (life insurance, annuities, investments preferred).

Compensation

The wage range for this role takes into account a broad array of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions, including but not limited to: skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs. The range below applies as long as the work is performed in Connecticut; the Knights of Columbus reserves the right to adjust the wage range if the position is performed in another location. At the Knights of Columbus, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their role, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is $153,000 - $260,000.

Authorization to work in the United States is required. This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship.

Physical Demands

Must be able to remain in a stationary position for a majority of the workday.

KofC Cares

Our mission is focused on family and faith, and we support our employees in seeking a balanced life.

Benefits

• Time Away: 13 paid holidays per year in addition to vacation and paid sick leave, and flexible workweek schedules.
• Professional Development: Certifications, designation, and tuition reimbursement.
• Retirement Benefits: 401(k) retirement savings plan with matching company contributions, and cash balance retirement plans fully funded by the company.
• Health and Wellness:
• Short-term disability and term life insurance fully paid for by the company.
• Up to 12 weeks of childbirth leave under STD policy.
• One week of fully paid parental leave for all new parents, including adoptive and foster parents.
• A variety of health insurance options, including premium-level family coverage and a pre-tax Health Savings Account with employer contributions.
• Long-term disability insurance.
• Dental insurance.
• Vision insurance.
• Health club membership reimbursement.
• Employee Assistance Program.