Snowflake Architect / Data Architect | Houston, TX

Job Description

Job Description

Snowflake Architect / Data Architect - Houston, TX

Location: Houston, Texas (Onsite/Hybrid - Relocation considered)

Employment Type: Full-time / Enterprise Data Platform

Work Authorization: USC / GC / GC EAD / H4 EAD / L2 ONLY

Experience: 8+ years in Data Engineering / Architecture

Domain: Oil & Natural Gas Midstream Mandatory + GenAI

About The Role

We are seeking a Snowflake Architect / Data Architect to design, build, and scale a modern cloud data platform centered on Snowflake and AWS.

You will be part of strategic data initiatives building trusted, reusable, governed data products that power analytics, AI, and business intelligence across the enterprise. This is a hands-on architecture + engineering role - not just modeling, but building pipelines, governance, and semantic layers at enterprise scale.

This is an excellent opportunity for a hands-on Data Architect who understands that data engineering is not only about moving data, but about making data trusted, discoverable, governed, and meaningful.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable data pipelines across structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data sources
• Develop data ingestion and ELT processes using Informatica, aligning with enterprise standards
• Build transformation logic using dbt - modular models, testing, documentation, deployment workflows
• Design and manage data structures in Snowflake as the central strategic data platform - modeling, performance optimization, security, access controls
• Work with AWS data services: S3, Glue, Lambda, Athena, EMR, Redshift and cloud-based architectures
• Support data architecture using Iceberg managed tables - open table formats, interoperability, cataloging, governed access patterns
• Use Snowflake Catalog and Snowflake Horizon for metadata management, data discovery, governance, lineage, policy enforcement, trusted sharing
• Collaborate with data architects, governance teams, analysts, application teams, business stakeholders to define trusted data products
• Work with domain experts to understand business concepts, entities, relationships, terminology in Oil & Gas Midstream domain
• Support ontology-driven modeling: entity definitions, taxonomies, relationships, business glossaries, semantic mappings
• Translate business/domain concepts into logical data models, physical models, and reusable data products
• Implement data quality checks, validation rules, lineage, observability, and governance controls
• Support data products for analytics and AI-enabled use cases (e.g., asset intelligence, news intelligence)
• Ensure solutions meet enterprise requirements for security, privacy, access control, performance, reliability

Must-Have Qualifications - Please Do Not Apply Without These

• Strong Snowflake Data Architecture experience - Data modeling, data warehouse/lakehouse design, performance optimization, security, access controls, enterprise-scale implementations
• Data Governance & Metadata Management expertise - Hands-on with data cataloging, metadata management, data lineage, data quality, governance frameworks, policy-driven access
• Understanding of Ontology & Semantic Modeling - taxonomies, business glossaries, semantic mappings, RDF/OWL/SHACL/SPARQL, knowledge graphs
• Working knowledge of AWS services: S3, Glue, Lambda, Athena, EMR, Redshift and cloud architectures
• Oil & Natural Gas Midstream domain experience (Mandatory) - pipeline, transportation, storage, LNG, natural gas, midstream operations data
• Claude AI / Generative AI experience (Mandatory) - Claude, LLM-based solutions, AI-ready data platforms, RAG architectures, GenAI implementations
• Stable work history - No job hoppers (consistent 2-4 year or 4+ year tenures preferred)

Nice to Have / Preferred

• Experience with Snowflake Catalog and Snowflake Horizon
• Experience building governed data products for analytics, AI, or applications
• Enterprise governance tooling, especially Informatica governance
• RDF, OWL, SHACL, SPARQL, graph databases, knowledge graph platforms
• Semantic layers, business glossaries, metadata models, domain ontologies
• CI/CD, Git, automated testing, deployment workflows for data pipelines
• Data observability, lineage tracking, data contracts, data quality frameworks

Technical Stack

Snowflake | AWS (S3, Glue, Lambda, Athena, EMR, Redshift) | Iceberg | Snowflake Catalog & Horizon | Informatica | dbt | SQL | Python | Data Governance | Ontology & Semantic Modeling | Claude AI / GenAI / RAG

Screening Questions for Candidates

1. 1. What is your work authorization / visa status? (USC/GC/GCEAD/H4EAD/L2 only)
2. 2. Do you have direct professional experience with Claude AI or LLM-based solutions in production?
3. 3. Do you have working knowledge of AWS services including S3, Glue, Lambda, Athena, EMR, Redshift? (Yes/No)
4. 4. Rate your Snowflake security and access controls experience: No experience / Basic RBAC / Hands-on enterprise policies / Expert-level design
5. 5. Rate your data lineage and data quality management experience
6. 6. Rate your GenAI and RAG architecture experience
7. 7. Describe your tenure history - multiple <1 year roles will be auto-rejected per client
8. 8. Describe your Oil & Gas Midstream domain experience - pipeline, transportation, storage, LNG?
9. 9. Describe your Ontology & Semantic Modeling experience
10. 10. Are you currently in Houston, TX or open to relocation?