Senior Snowflake Architect - FinOps, Governance & Security

Senior Snowflake Architect – FinOps, Governance & Security

We are seeking a Senior / Principal-level Snowflake Architect for an initial 8–10 week consulting engagement supporting the assessment of a large, complex enterprise Snowflake environment. This is an architecture and advisory-focused engagement centered on evaluating the organization's current Snowflake implementation and developing a clear remediation plan and future-state strategy. The primary area of focus is Snowflake FinOps and compute optimization, along with governance, security, data intake/integration, configuration, and overall platform architecture. The environment is large, mature, and highly complex. The consultant must be able to look across the entire Snowflake ecosystem, identify architectural and operational issues, distinguish symptoms from root causes, and recommend practical improvements based on Snowflake best practices. This is not primarily a hands-on development position. The ideal candidate is a senior Snowflake SME who can assess the environment at an architectural level, guide technical teams on how Snowflake should be implemented and governed, and assist with targeted configuration or quick-win remediation where appropriate.

Key Responsibilities

• Perform a comprehensive assessment of a large-scale enterprise Snowflake environment.
• Evaluate the current-state architecture, configuration, governance, security, data intake, ETL/integration, and operational processes.
• Lead the FinOps assessment, with particular emphasis on Snowflake compute consumption and cost optimization.
• Analyze Snowflake usage and spending to identify inefficient compute utilization, unnecessary querying, data-management practices, and other drivers of excessive platform cost.
• Recommend improved approaches for compute management, cost visibility, budgeting, forecasting, and ongoing FinOps governance.
• Evaluate existing Snowflake governance practices and identify gaps in standards, policies, processes, ownership, and controls.
• Assess security architecture and implementation, including roles, permissions, administrative access, and overall access-control strategy.
• Review the current implementation against Snowflake architectural and security best practices.
• Assess data ingestion and integration processes and their impact on Snowflake performance, cost, and governance.
• Evaluate the interaction between Snowflake and the surrounding enterprise data ecosystem, including Informatica and other integration technologies.
• Define a practical current-state to future-state roadmap and prioritized remediation plan.
• Identify low-hanging opportunities that can be corrected or reconfigured during the assessment itself.
• Participate in stakeholder and technical discovery sessions to understand both platform operations and business requirements.
• Clearly communicate findings, architectural recommendations, risks, priorities, and remediation strategies to technical and business stakeholders.
• Support development and presentation of final assessment findings and recommendations.

Required Qualifications

• Extensive experience designing, assessing, and supporting large-scale enterprise Snowflake environments.
• Senior or Principal-level Snowflake architecture expertise.
• Demonstrated experience with Snowflake FinOps, compute optimization, and cost management.
• Deep understanding of Snowflake's consumption and pricing model and the architectural decisions that influence platform cost.
• Experience identifying and resolving inefficient compute utilization and Snowflake consumption patterns.
• Strong Snowflake governance experience, including standards, policies, processes, controls, and platform operating models.
• Strong knowledge of Snowflake security architecture, including role design, access controls, permissions, and security best practices.
• Experience performing current-state assessments and developing future-state architectures and remediation roadmaps.
• Strong understanding of enterprise data warehousing, data ingestion, ETL/ELT, and integration architecture.
• Ability to operate at an architectural and strategic level while remaining technical enough to identify and assist with targeted configuration changes.
• Experience working with large, mature, and complex enterprise data environments.
• Strong stakeholder-facing, consulting, documentation, and presentation skills.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience with Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC).
• Experience with Informatica in conjunction with Snowflake enterprise data warehouse environments.
• Familiarity with MuleSoft and other enterprise integration technologies.
• Experience conducting architecture, optimization, governance, or platform-health assessments.
• Experience transitioning an assessment into a larger remediation or modernization initiative.

Engagement Details

• Initial Duration: 8–10 weeks
• Target Start: Mid-October
• Engagement Type: Consulting / project-based

The initial engagement will focus on assessment, findings, and development of a remediation plan. Full future-state remediation is not included in the initial scope; however, the consultant may assist with targeted quick wins or configuration changes identified during the assessment. There is significant potential for follow-on remediation and production-support work after the assessment. That subsequent work could extend into a longer-term engagement. The engagement offers flexibility in how much of the work is performed remotely. However, the consultant must be available for an initial onsite discovery/assessment period of approximately one to two weeks and should also be available to support presentation of the final recommendations. Part-time availability may be considered for an exceptional senior-level consultant who can meet the onsite and project-delivery requirements.

Ideal Candidate

The strongest candidate will be someone who has walked into a large, complicated Snowflake environment where costs, governance, security, and architecture have grown difficult to control and knows how to quickly determine what is happening, why it is happening, and what needs to change. This person should be capable of looking beyond individual technical issues and evaluating the Snowflake environment holistically—from FinOps and compute consumption to governance, security, data ingestion, architecture, and operating processes—then translating those findings into an actionable remediation strategy.