Principal Consultant_Decision Scientist_4 (California)

Role Overview

Principal Architect – Data Engineering, AI & GCP (G4). We’re looking for a Principal Architect who is a recognized SME in Google Cloud Platform, with deep roots in Data Engineering and a sharp eye for AI/ML‑driven solutions. The role goes beyond pure advisory: you will own architecture, drive delivery, and serve as a technical anchor that clients trust when stakes are high.

Responsibilities

Architecture & Strategy

• Define short‑ and long‑term technology vision for clients, evaluating their current landscape and charting a path forward.
• Lead end‑to‑end architecture for Data Engineering, Data Warehousing, and AI/ML solutions on GCP.
• Design scalable, secure, future‑proof solutions using GCP‑native services BigQuery, Dataflow, Cloud Composer, Vertex AI, Dataproc, Cloud Storage, and more.
• Build foundational architectures: microservices, event‑driven systems, event streaming, and online ML systems.
• Champion data governance, data management best practices, and platform maintainability.

Delivery Leadership

• Act as Delivery Lead on large‑scale programs owning timelines, quality, risk, and client satisfaction end to end.
• Drive program governance across workstreams, keeping cross‑functional and cross‑geography teams aligned.
• Step in hands‑on during critical delivery phases for architecture validation, performance tuning, and production issue resolution.
• Bridge the gap between architecture decisions and execution realities, ensuring long‑term scalability is never sacrificed for short‑term speed.
• Mentor delivery teams, instilling strong engineering practices, accountability, and a culture of continuous improvement.

Client Engagement

• Become a trusted thought partner to senior client leaders understanding their pain points and translating them into actionable technical strategies.
• Proactively identify client needs and align them with innovative, business‑impacting solutions.
• Communicate complex technical concepts clearly across executive, business, and engineering audiences.
• Build lasting relationships with senior stakeholders and cross‑functional teams.

Community & Enablement

• Contribute to best practices, reference architectures, and technical content that elevate the broader practice.
• Collaborate with data engineers and data scientists to co‑develop architecture that serves both analytical and operational needs.

Qualifications – Must Have

• 12+ years in Data Engineering and Cloud‑native technologies, with deep GCP expertise.
• Hands‑on mastery of BigQuery, Dataflow, Cloud Composer, Vertex AI, Dataproc, Cloud Storage, and GCP serverless infrastructure.
• Proven delivery of end‑to‑end Data Engineering, Data Warehousing, or Analytics platforms at scale.
• Strong programming skills in Python and/or Java.
• Experience with Agile, CI/CD, DevOps, and MLOps pipelines.
• Track record leading large, complex, client‑facing delivery programs.
• Ability to manage cross‑functional, cross‑geography teams with clarity and accountability.
• Prior Google with direct exposure to first‑party tooling.
• Write and optimize queries using PLX or similar structured querying languages (e.g., SQL, Dremel/Spanner).

Qualifications – Nice to Have

• Docker & Kubernetes experience.
• DevOps on GCP.
• AWS experience, especially in hybrid cloud contexts.
• Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect Certification.

Compensation

Pay range: $200,000 to $250,000 Yearly . In addition, you may be eligible for a discretionary bonus for the current performance period.

Benefits

• Health, dental, vision, life insurance, and disability plans (for full‑time and hourly employees working more than 30 hours per week).
• Eligible to participate in the Company 401(k) Plan after 30 days of employment.
• 11 paid holidays and 12 weeks of Parental Leave.
• “Free time” PTO policy allowing you flexibility for sick time or vacation.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Fractal provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.