Data Architecture Consultant

Job Title: Data Architecture Consultant

Duration: 3 6 months

Location: Remote US

Have a new job order that I'll accept candidates on. It's a broad JD below that I defined. The client is nontechnical, so the scope they could share was limited at best. The client is an advertising company that landed a contract with a US military service branch, so they need to get their data, reporting environments and platforms up to par and aligned with government compliance and regulatory standards from what I understand.

Description:

Position Overview

We are seeking an experienced Data Architect Consultant to design and implement secure, scalable, and audit-ready data solutions within Microsoft government cloud environments. This individual will combine deep data architecture expertise with a strong background in public-sector audit, financial controls, regulatory compliance, and data governance.

The consultant will be responsible for defining the organization's target-state data architecture across Azure Government, Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud (GCC), and Microsoft Fabric. The role will partner closely with Finance, Internal Audit, Compliance, Security, IT, and business stakeholders to ensure data is properly governed, protected, traceable, and available for financial reporting, audit support, analytics, and regulatory requirements.

Key Responsibilities

• Assess the current data environment, including data sources, integrations, reporting platforms, governance practices, security controls, and audit processes.
• Develop current-state and target-state data architecture across Azure Government, Microsoft 365 GCC, Microsoft Fabric, and related enterprise systems.
• Design secure data ingestion, transformation, storage, integration, semantic modeling, reporting, and archival solutions.
• Establish architecture standards for Microsoft Fabric components such as OneLake, Lakehouse, Warehouse, Data Factory, Power BI, and data pipelines.
• Translate financial reporting, public-sector audit, and compliance requirements into technical architecture and data-control frameworks.
• Design data lineage, traceability, reconciliation, validation, and evidence-retention capabilities that support internal and external audits.
• Evaluate and strengthen financial controls related to data access, change management, segregation of duties, data quality, reporting accuracy, and system interfaces.
• Define governance standards for data ownership, stewardship, classification, retention, privacy, metadata, and lifecycle management.
• Partner with audit and compliance teams to identify control gaps, document risks, and develop remediation plans.
• Ensure architecture aligns with applicable government security and compliance requirements, including NIST, FedRAMP, FISMA, and organizational control frameworks.
• Design role-based access controls and information-protection strategies across Azure Government, Microsoft 365 GCC, Fabric, Power BI, SharePoint, and Teams.
• Support the development of policies, control narratives, data-flow diagrams, architecture diagrams, risk assessments, and audit evidence.
• Advise stakeholders on the appropriate use of Microsoft Purview or comparable tools for data cataloging, classification, lineage, and governance.
• Establish data-quality controls, monitoring processes, exception reporting, and reconciliation procedures for critical financial and operational data.
• Guide the migration of legacy data and reporting workloads into modern Microsoft government cloud platforms.
• Facilitate architecture workshops and communicate technical risks, recommendations, and roadmaps to both technical and executive audiences.
• Provide technical leadership to data engineers, BI developers, security teams, application owners, and implementation partners.

Required Qualifications

• Extensive experience in enterprise data architecture, data engineering architecture, or data platform consulting.
• Strong experience supporting public-sector organizations, governmental entities, regulated environments, or public accounting and audit engagements.
• Demonstrated knowledge of financial controls, internal controls, audit readiness, risk management, and compliance.
• Hands-on architecture experience with Azure Government.
• Experience working within Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud environments.
• Strong knowledge of Microsoft Fabric, including OneLake, Lakehouse, Warehouse, Data Factory, Power BI, semantic models, and data pipelines.
• Experience designing cloud-based data warehouses, data lakes, lakehouses, integration frameworks, and analytics platforms.
• Strong understanding of data governance, metadata management, data lineage, data classification, retention, and records management.
• Experience designing controls for data completeness, accuracy, authorization, reconciliation, traceability, and reporting integrity.
• Knowledge of identity and access management, role-based access control, least-privilege principles, and segregation of duties.
• Familiarity with government and security frameworks such as NIST 800-53, FedRAMP, FISMA, and Zero Trust.
• Ability to develop architecture documentation, data models, control matrices, data-flow diagrams, technical standards, and implementation roadmaps.
• Strong stakeholder-management and consulting skills, with the ability to translate audit, financial, and regulatory requirements into technical solutions.

Looking forward to hearing from you!