Lead Data Architect

Location: Minnesota ( Candidate must be ready to travel anywhere around Minnesota)

Client's Industry: Financial Services / Regulated Environment

Position Overview

Empowers Staffing is recruiting an experienced Lead Data Architect for a financial

services organization.

This is a senior technical leadership position responsible for defining and advancing

enterprise data architecture while helping modernize a large-scale cloud data

environment.

The successful candidate will establish architecture standards, guide data engineering

teams, design scalable data solutions, strengthen governance and security, and help

prepare the organization's data environment for advanced analytics and AI.

The position requires someone who can operate at the architecture and strategy level

while remaining technically hands-on.

Key Responsibilities

Define and evolve enterprise data architecture, standards, models, and design

patterns.

Lead architecture and solution design for modern cloud-based data platforms.

Design scalable environments supporting analytics, reporting, operational data, and

advanced data use cases.

Establish architectural standards for data integration, security, governance, quality,

performance, and reliability.

Provide technical leadership and mentorship to Data Engineers and other technical

professionals.

Serve as a senior escalation resource for complex data-platform and engineering

issues.

Participate in the architecture, development, and review of data pipelines and

integration processes.

Guide ETL/ELT architecture and engineering practices.

Lead modernization of legacy and existing data environments.

Improve platform scalability, resiliency, performance, and operating efficiency.

Partner with technology, analytics, risk, compliance, and business teams to

translate requirements into practical data solutions.

Establish approaches for secure and governed enterprise data access.

Help ensure data solutions meet regulatory, security, privacy, and internal

governance requirements.

Evaluate new technologies and recommend improvements to the organization's

data ecosystem.

Support cloud migration and data-platform transformation initiatives.

Advance organizational readiness for AI, machine learning, advanced analytics,

and intelligent automation.

Help establish architecture that supports both traditional data warehousing and

modern lakehouse approaches.

Provide technical direction throughout solution design, implementation, and

ongoing platform evolution.

Required Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a

related technical discipline.

10+ years of professional experience in data engineering, data architecture, data

platform engineering, or closely related disciplines.

At least 5 years of experience designing and implementing enterprise-scale

cloud data platforms.

Strong experience with cloud-based data services.

Advanced SQL skills.

Strong Python experience.

Experience with distributed data-processing technologies such as Spark.

Strong knowledge of ETL/ELT architecture and frameworks.

Experience designing modern data warehouse, data lake, or lakehouse

environments.

Strong understanding of enterprise data modeling and architecture patterns.

Experience implementing data governance, data quality, security, and access

control standards.

Experience designing scalable and resilient enterprise data solutions.

Demonstrated technical leadership experience.

Experience mentoring or providing architectural direction to Data Engineers.

Experience working within regulated, security-sensitive, or highly governed

environments.

Highly Desirable Experience

Experience with several of the following would be particularly valuable:

Microsoft Azure data technologies

Databricks

Snowflake

Microsoft Fabric

Power BI

Real-time or streaming data architectures

AI/ML platforms

Enterprise cloud migrations

Large-scale data modernization

AI enablement initiatives

Relevant cloud, data-engineering, architecture, or data-platform certifications are also

beneficial.

Ideal Candidate

We're looking for someone who is more than an enterprise architect who produces

diagrams and standards.