Hiring: Engagement Lead / Principal Data Architect at New York, NY

Position: Engagement Lead / Principal Data Architect

Location: New York, NY (Need on-site day 1, hybrid 3 days from office)

Duration: Long-Term Contract

Our challenge:

• We are seeking a senior Principal Data Architecture Engagement Lead to lead a strategic data-transformation and target-state architecture engagement for a major banking client. This role combines engagement leadership, enterprise data architecture, governance and executive stakeholder management. The successful candidate will be accountable for establishing the delivery framework, managing risks and dependencies, driving ownership decisions and defending the target-state conceptual architecture at the client's architecture board. Candidate will work closely with business and technology stakeholders, the Data Mesh and Enterprise Architecture teams, domain representatives and delivery leads.

Responsibilities:

• Secure read-only access to SQL Server system metadata and stand up the approved analysis workspace and repository within the first two weeks; this gate governs the whole plan.
• Agree the RACI, standards, templates and working cadence with Mizuho, and lock the fortnightly delivery-leadership review and the escalation path into the architecture board.
• Map stakeholders and secure a single named coordination point per business domain (a stated dependency of the proposal, and the primary schedule risk).
• Own the risk, issue and dependency log; escalate stakeholder-availability slippage early rather than absorbing it into float.
• Chair the DACI forum for contested and multi-domain items. Apply the stated position: exactly one accountable owner plus explicit contracted consumers, never diffuse co-ownership.
• Quality-gate every phase exit against the agreed key exits before deliverables.
• Own the target-state conceptual architecture narrative jointly with the Data-Mesh / Enterprise Architect, and defend it at the architecture board.
• Author the executive summary and recommendations (slide deck and Word), sequencing the roadmap against materiality, regulatory exposure and delivery risk.
• Frame the follow-on phase: what should fund next, in what order, and what the cost of deferral is on the highest-materiality core tables.

Requirements:

• 10+ years in data architecture or data transformation consulting, with 3+ years as the accountable owner of engagements at director or principal level.
• Capital markets or Tier-1/Tier-2 banking domain grounding: able to hold a credible conversation about trade, position, collateral, sub-ledger and regulatory reporting data without an SME in the room.
• Demonstrated ownership of a target-state data architecture that was formally accepted by a bank architecture review board - candidates should be able to name the board, the decision and the objections they had to answer.
• Data mesh operating-model fluency: domain ownership, data as a product, self-serve platform, federated computational governance - and a considered view on where mesh fails (over-centralising versus over-fragmenting shared assets).
• Lakehouse and medallion architecture on Azure Databricks; sufficient depth to challenge a pattern, not merely approve it.
• Executive presence with bank stakeholders at head-of and MD level; comfortable running a steering committee and delivering unwelcome findings.
• TOGAF certification, or equivalent evidence of using TOGAF to govern a pattern catalogue.

Preferred, but not required:

• Experience decomposing a SQL Server or Oracle monolith where stored-procedure logic obscured ownership boundaries.
• Regulatory programme exposure: CCAR / FR Y-14, Dodd-Frank, BCBS 239 lineage and CDE evidence.
• Experience running a distributed delivery team across US, Canada and India time zones on a fixed-window engagement.