Data Architect

Data Architect

Job Purpose

The Lead Data Architect owns the technical target state for Gas data platform and the sequenced technical roadmap to achieve it. The role defines the Gas Data platform architecture, migration strategy and data standards that turn a legacy-to-modern migration into a durable, governed capability - enabling NY and NE Gas value streams to access trusted data, consume reusable data products, and operate safely at lower cost.

Key responsibilities

• Snowflake hands on experience and platform expertise
• Data architecture experience
• Data Modeling experience
• Define and hold the target state

Utility experience.

• Produce and maintain the Gas Data platform target-state architecture and the technical roadmap to evolve data and AI capabilities.
• Set modelling and layering standards, including the Medallion architecture where the Gold/Curated Data layer is genuinely required versus where raw data plus report-level SQL and establish faster, cheaper path to business value. Prevent over-engineering of the Curated Data Layer ahead of demonstrated need.
• Run design review for significant changes; make the call when there is a trade-off between speed, performance and durability, and document the reasoning.
• Ensure compliance to all data masking business requirements
• Maintain the Gas Data Model to reflect business defined, abstract data objects in the Gold/Curated Data Layer
• Own the migration strategy
• Complete the technical plan data migration and drive it to closure, including the incremental report migration approach and the ODS decommissioning path.
• Build the formal legacy application data migration strategy, segmenting applications into: - historical, live-feed-until-sunset, feature-parity replacement, and security-priority. Sequence by business value, dependency complexity and data residency need.
• Define the decommissioning value case in technical terms - what is retired, when, and what cost and risk that removes.
• Architect the data services layer
• Design reusable ingestion, API and service patterns so new sources and consumers follow a known route rather than a bespoke build.
• Establish the third-party and external data onboarding pattern, including licensing, refresh and quality controls, and playbooks for priority sources.
• Reduce manual file transfers and spreadsheet-based processes through automated, monitored ingestion.
• Make quality and control structural
• Architect DQ measurement into the platform: completeness, freshness, lineage, exception capture and issue resolution routing.
• Design access, masking, retention and audit patterns that let business users self-serve safely.
• Provide the technical view into the Data Governance Council on standards, certification criteria and risk.

Required Qualifications

Required experience

• [10]+ years in data and analytics roles, including [5]+ years in a data architecture role on enterprise-scale platforms.
• At least one end-to-end legacy-to-modern platform migration carried through to decommissioning of the source system - not a parallel build left running.
• Deep, hands-on architecture experience with a cloud data platform; Snowflake strongly preferred, including warehouse/lakehouse layering, workload design, performance tuning and consumption cost characteristics.
• Strong SQL and dimensional/analytical data modelling, at a level sufficient to review and improve the designs of engineers in the team.
• Experience designing ingestion and integration patterns across batch, streaming, file-based and API sources, including third-party and vendor-supplied data.
• Experience designing API and data-service patterns serving both operational and analytical consumers.
• Demonstrated track record of building data governance, data quality, lineage and observability into a platform by design rather than reporting on it retrospectively.
• Working knowledge of access control, role design, data masking, retention and audit requirements in a regulated environment.
• Python and modern data engineering tooling; infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD applied to data pipelines.
• Experience producing architecture artefacts that are actually used - data models, reference architectures, decision records, standards and design reviews - and governing adherence to them without becoming a delivery bottleneck.
• Proven ability to communicate architecture, sequencing and trade-offs in business, cost and risk terms to senior non-technical stakeholders.

Preferred experience

• Utility, energy or other regulated infrastructure sector experience; familiarity with gas asset, GIS, field operations, compliance or metering data domains.
• Exposure to rate case, regulatory funding or capital planning cycles, and to building the technical evidence base that supports them.
• Experience operating a data product or data mesh model - catalogs, data contracts, SLAs, certification and federated governance.
• Geospatial data experience, including conflation and spatial data quality.
• Experience with cloud cost and consumption governance, including chargeback or show back models.
• Experience mentoring or technically leading data engineers and analytics engineers.

To meet the growing data management demand on Gas IT&D in support of major programs-we are expanding the team, and the hiring of lead data architect role is part of this effort.