Principal Data Architect: Data Movement, Enrichment, and Orchestration

Job Summary We are seeking a hands‑on Principal Data Architect to serve as a leader in our ongoing data and digital transformation, leveraging a modern open data ecosystem built on foundational iceberg lakehouse patterns for both humans and AI to thrive. This role will own defining and delivering our enterprise strategy and architectural approach towards data movement [including integration and interoperability], enrichment, and orchestration. This scope will span the full enterprise of a complex hybrid ecosystem: we are not a skunkworks team just trying out new technology and you will make our implementations with dbt, airflow, kafka, and iceberg real for a $30 B+ company impacting millions of lives across the country. Not only will this person be a leader of our rapid modernization, but will insistently keep a business and customer first mentality. The right leader understands the efficiencies and innovations needed to transform, will also couple with deprecating a number of existing operational/legacy platforms. We require a natural thought leader and strategic advisor, shaping and driving the evolution of complex architectures across multiple domains, necessitating tradeoffs on time, cost, and complexity, but never trading off the positive experiences and impacts to our members. Success in this role requires experience driving adoption of best practices and emerging technologies (ie lakehouse, iceberg, ELT vs ETL, and open‑source trends and tradeoffs), driving innovation and continuous improvement across the organization (teaching and mentoring is a passion for this person), and understanding the evolution of the space and patterns to make decisions that set the company and teams up for success short, mid, and long‑term (ie you know what’s ready for exploration vs what’s ready for enterprise scale). Essential Responsibilities Lead the development and articulation of complex architecture vision and strategy, ensuring alignment with business goals and strategic initiatives. Champion the adoption of best practices and emerging technologies, driving innovation and continuous improvement across the organization. Collaborate with senior stakeholders across the organization, influencing decision‑making and ensuring alignment on complex architectural solutions. Lead the evaluation and selection of new technologies and solutions, ensuring they meet the organization's evolving needs and strategic direction. Develop and maintain comprehensive architectural documentation, ensuring clarity and consistency across all stakeholders. Proactively identify and mitigate potential risks and challenges, ensuring the successful implementation and ongoing operation of complex architectures. Serve as a subject matter expert and advocate for architectural best practices, contributing to the development of organizational standards and policies. Provide expert guidance and mentorship, fostering a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing. Other duties as assigned or requested. Experience Required: 10 years of experience in Architecture, design, and implementation of complex systems and solutions. Preferred: 5+ years of enterprise data architecture experience driving transformation through data platform modernization. 5+ years of architecture frameworks and methodologies: This person will have a strong opinion of if medallion architecture is a framework, methodology, or a marketing term (you might get bonus points with examples of all three being an “ok” answer and may give a good use case argument where each may be the “best” answer). 7+ years of experience with data movement platforms as an engineer, architect, or technical product manager/owner. Strong experience and knowledge of the below relevant platforms to this role (Most critical being Airflow, Kafka, Flink, Iceberg Lakehouse, and DBT). Heavy emphasis for modernization: Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Airflow (including Cloud Composer), Beam (including DataFlow), DBT, Kafka (Confluent), Flink (Confluent), Spark (including DataProc and Databricks), Iceberg Format, Monte Carlo, Dynatrace, Atlan, Starburst, Vertex AI, GitLab, GPT, and more. Skills Architecture frameworks and methodologies Software Development Knowledge of emerging technologies Strategic thinking and influencing Critical thinking and decision making While not required to possess expertise in all of the following technologies/areas, Principal Architects must demonstrate proficiency in those relevant to the applications they support: IMS, DB2, Oracle, Teradata, Data Warehousing, COBOL, Visual Basic, C, C++, SAS, Java/JavaScript Framework, PEGA, CSS3, Mobile, JSON, Cognos, Hadoop, SQL, J2EE, HTML5/XML, Waterfall, Agile. Education Required: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology or closely related discipline. Preferred: Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology or closely related discipline. Licenses or Certifications Required: None Preferred: None Language (Other than English) None Travel Requirement 0% – 25% Physical, Mental Demands and Working Conditions Position Type: Office‑ or Remote‑based Teaches / trains others: Occasionally Travel from the office to various work sites or from site‑to‑site: Rarely Works primarily out‑of‑the office selling products/services (sales employees): Never Physical work site required: No Lifting: up to 10 pounds – Constantly Lifting: 10 to 25 pounds – Occasionally Lifting: 25 to 50 pounds – Rarely Pay Range Minimum: $108,000.00 Maximum: $201,800.00 EEO Statement Highmark Health and its affiliates prohibit discrimination against qualified individuals based on their status as protected veterans or individuals with disabilities and prohibit discrimination against all individuals based on any category protected by applicable federal, state, or local law. We endeavor to make this site accessible to any and all users. 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