What are the responsibilities and job description for the Lead Snowflake Data Architect position at AVAWATZ?
Lead Snowflake Data Architect
Location: Dallas, TX area preferred (hybrid)
Type: Contract
We're looking for a senior Snowflake architect to lead a current-state assessment of an enterprise data platform built on Snowflake and Informatica. You'll inventory the existing data landscape and identify where the architecture falls short. Then you'll deliver a target-state blueprint and platform strategy the client can act on. This is a client-facing role. You need to go deep on technical design and explain your recommendations clearly to executives.
Responsibilities
• Inventory data sources, pipelines, integrations, data models, and downstream consumers, and document the current-state architecture.
• Assess the existing Snowflake and Informatica implementation for technical debt, scalability limits, and security and governance gaps.
• Define the target-state architecture and platform strategy. This covers ingestion, storage, transformation, sharing, governance, and consumption.
• Recommend standard ingestion patterns (batch, CDC, streaming, API, file-based) and data retention and archival strategies for long-lived historical data.
• Evaluate whether domain-oriented or Data Mesh approaches would benefit the organization, and recommend where they fit and where they don't.
Required
• 10 years in data architecture or data engineering, including 4 years designing enterprise solutions on Snowflake.
• Hands-on experience with Informatica IDMC (Intelligent Data Management Cloud) and/or Informatica Data Quality (IDQ) integrated with Snowflake.
• Deep knowledge of Snowflake architecture: virtual warehouses, stages, Snowpipe, Streams and Tasks, secure data sharing, RBAC, masking, and row-level security.
• Experience conducting current-state assessments and producing target-state architectures and roadmaps.
• Strong background in data modeling, metadata management, lineage, and data quality.
• Cloud data architecture experience on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including presenting to executive stakeholders.
Highly Desired
• SnowPro Advanced: Architect certification.
• Experience designing or evaluating Data Mesh or domain-oriented architectures (data products, data contracts, federated governance). The emphasis is on judging when these approaches fit.
• Working knowledge of other lakehouse platforms such as Databricks or Microsoft Fabric.
• Experience with open table formats such as Apache Iceberg, and with tiered storage for large historical datasets.
• Experience with data catalogs such as Collibra, Alation, or Microsoft Purview.
• Consulting or advisory experience.