Data Architect

Job Description

Job Description

About the Opportunity

Complete Staffing has a client seeking a Data Architect to lead the design and continued evolution of its enterprise data architecture.

This is a senior individual-contributor opportunity for an experienced data professional who can bridge data architecture, cloud analytics, SQL Server, data governance, and business intelligence. The ideal candidate will help establish the standards and architecture that data engineers, analysts, and financial reporting teams use to build scalable, secure, and reliable data solutions.

The environment includes a modern Microsoft Fabric analytics platform utilizing a Bronze/Silver/Gold medallion architecture, along with a significant on-premises SQL Server environment supporting core transactional workloads.

You will help define how data moves from systems such as Dynamics 365 F&O, SQL Server, APIs, and flat files into Microsoft Fabric and OneLake, how it is transformed and modeled, and how it ultimately supports trusted Power BI reporting and analytics.

This role offers the opportunity to have significant influence over the organization's long-term data strategy while remaining hands-on with architecture and technology.

What You'll Do

Enterprise Data Architecture

• Own and evolve the organization's target-state data architecture across Microsoft Fabric and on-premises SQL Server.
• Establish architectural standards for determining which workloads should remain on-premises, move to the cloud, or operate in a hybrid model.
• Define and maintain the organization's Bronze, Silver, and Gold data architecture standards.
• Design logical and physical data models, dimensional models, and enterprise data structures.
• Maintain and improve the enterprise data model, business glossary, and data dictionary.
• Create reference architectures, technical standards, and architecture decision records.
• Review significant data designs and provide architectural guidance before development begins.
• Partner with technical and business stakeholders to translate organizational goals into scalable data solutions.

Hybrid & On-Premises Data Integration

• Design integration strategies between SQL Server and Microsoft Fabric.
• Determine the appropriate integration approach based on data volume, latency, performance, complexity, and cost.
• Establish strategies for change data capture (CDC), incremental loading, and data watermarking.
• Design solutions that keep cloud data current while protecting the performance and stability of transactional systems.
• Partner with database and data engineering teams on high availability, disaster recovery, retention, and archival strategies.
• Establish standards around SQL Server database design, indexing, partitioning, and performance.

Microsoft Fabric Architecture

• Design Microsoft Fabric tenant, workspace, and capacity architecture.
• Establish development, testing, and production promotion processes across data, financial analytics, and business reporting environments.
• Define clear ownership boundaries between IT, FP&A, and business reporting teams.
• Establish Direct Lake as the preferred Power BI connectivity approach while determining when Import or DirectQuery may be appropriate.
• Develop standards for source control and deployment using Git and Azure DevOps.
• Establish best practices for Fabric pipelines, notebooks, semantic models, SQL objects, and other data assets.
• Monitor platform performance, capacity utilization, and cost, and identify opportunities for optimization.

Data Governance, Security & Quality

• Establish data security standards across the Bronze, Silver, and Gold layers.
• Partner with security and data governance teams to ensure appropriate access controls and data protection.
• Support implementation and use of Microsoft Purview for data cataloging, lineage, classification, and governance.
• Establish data quality and reconciliation standards to ensure reporting data can be traced back to source systems.
• Help establish standards around promoted and certified Power BI datasets and semantic models.
• Partner with stakeholders to improve confidence, consistency, and trust in enterprise data.

AI & Emerging Data Capabilities

• Help establish the data foundation needed to support AI, analytics, and agent-based applications.
• Design structured and unstructured data access patterns for use cases such as Copilot Studio and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG).
• Evaluate emerging database and data platform capabilities, including vector search, semantic search, and in-database embeddings.
• Identify practical opportunities where AI and advanced data capabilities can create measurable business value.

Collaboration & Mentorship

• Serve as a technical resource and mentor for data engineers, analysts, and financial reporting teams.
• Establish and promote strong data modeling and architecture practices.
• Collaborate with Software Architecture, Infrastructure, Security, Data Governance, FP&A, and business stakeholders.
• Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and executive audiences.
• Provide architectural leadership without requiring direct people management.

What We're Looking For

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Management, or a related field.
• 5+ years of experience designing and delivering enterprise data solutions.
• At least 2 years of experience in a data architecture, lead data engineering, or similar senior technical role.
• Experience designing modern cloud analytics or data platforms.
• Strong Microsoft Fabric experience preferred; experience with Synapse, Databricks, or comparable lakehouse technologies will also be considered.
• Strong hands-on experience with SQL Server and T-SQL, including database design, indexing, partitioning, and performance tuning.
• Strong understanding of dimensional modeling, star schemas, medallion architecture, and ETL/ELT design.
• Experience integrating on-premises data sources with cloud data platforms.
• Experience with CDC, incremental loading, and data integration patterns.
• Working knowledge of Power BI semantic models, DAX, and row-level security.
• Experience with Python or PySpark for data transformation and large-scale data processing.
• Experience using Git and Azure DevOps for data and development assets.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills with the ability to work across technical and business teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Microsoft certification such as:
• Microsoft Certified: Fabric Analytics Engineer
• Microsoft Certified: Fabric Data Engineer
• Azure Solutions Architect Expert
• Experience with Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations (F&O) data structures and integrations.
• Experience with Microsoft Purview.
• Experience supporting FP&A, financial reporting, or enterprise finance data.
• Knowledge of General Ledger, cost center, allocation, or similar financial data models.
• Experience participating in architecture review boards or enterprise technology governance initiatives.
• Experience in construction, specialty contracting, or another project-based industry.
• Kansas City metro area resident preferred.
• This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship.