Senior Data Architect in Sunnyvale
Role details
Job location
Tech stack
Job description
The"Senior Data Architect"provides technical leadership across Hilti's data landscape shaping enterprise data strategy and designing scalable, secure, and well governed data platforms that power analytics, AI/ML, and intelligent applications. This role spans"traditional data management"(DBMS, data modeling, warehousing, governance) and"modern cloud /AI data engineering"on AWS, including"bronze, silver, gold patterns, (RAG)"for LLMs, and data products that serve Cloud- SaaS"application teams at global scale. You will collaborate with business stakeholders, data scientists, engineers, and platform teams to translate use cases into"target data architectures, ensuring performance, reliability, security, and cost efficiency at global scale., * Architect end-to-end pipelines across from raw to polished layers using Cloud services such as"S3, Glue (ETL & Data Catalog), Lake Formation, Redshift, Athena, EMR/Spark, Kinesis/MSK, Step Functions, Lambda, EventBridge.
- Define storage/format strategies (e.g.,"Parquet/Delta/Apache Iceberg) and partitioning, compaction, and indexing for performance and cost.
- Implement"row/ column level security, encryption (KMS), secrets management, and fine-grained authorization via"IAM/Lake Formation.
AI/ML & Amazon Bedrock Data Foundations
- Design datasets and"feature/knowledge"layers to support"SageMaker"training/inference and"Amazon Bedrock"applications (e.g.,"Knowledge Bases,"Guardrails,"Agents, and Invoke Model/Converse orchestration).
- Lead"RAG"architectures (chunking, embeddings, retrieval) using"vector databases"such as"Amazon OpenSearch Serverless (vector search)"or"Aurora PostgreSQL + pgvector; define evaluation and feedback loops to improve answer quality.
- Set"prompt, context, and token budget"standards; guide teams on safe data handling for LLMs (PII redaction, policy driven filters, secured context injection).
Tradition Data Architecture & DBMS Excellence
- Provide deep expertise in relational and NoSQL systems:"SQL Server,"PostgreSQL,"MongoDB, including"schema design, indexing, query/perf tuning, replication, partitioning, and HA/DR.
- Design and govern"EDW/ Lakehouse/ODS"patterns; integrate with".NET/C#"services and"Angular"frontends via well designed APIs and data contracts.
Integration, Interoperability & Application Alignment
- Define"API and data contract standards"(REST/GraphQL, Protobuf/Avro/JSON), ensuring consistent versioning and backward compatibility for".NET/C#"and"Angular"consumers.
- Orchestrate ingestion from"SAP, Salesforce, IoT/telemetry, external data sources, and partner ecosystems; standardize CDC and streaming patterns (e.g.,"MSK/Kinesis,"DMS,"Glue).
- Partner with Solution/Platform Architects to ensure"microservices"and"event driven"designs are data efficient and observability ready.
Data Governance, Quality & Observability
- Implement"data governance"(policies, stewardship, data classification),"cataloging"(Glue Data Catalog),"lineage"(Open Lineage compatible), and"quality"(rules, thresholds, SLAs/SLOs).
- Embed"monitoring & cost governance"(CloudWatch, CloudTrail, Cost Explorer, Lake Formation audit, data access logs) and drive continuous optimization (storage tiers, compaction, pruning).
Security, Compliance & Risk
- Enforce privacy and compliance (e.g., GDPR) with"data minimization, tokenization, masking, and"access controls"across environments.
- Define secure patterns for"model inputs/outputs"(LLM safety),"prompt hygiene, and"guardrails"to prevent leakage or misuse.
Delivery Leadership & Collaboration
- Produce"architecture blueprints, target state designs, and"build/run guardrails; guide PoCs and pilots to derisk solutions.
- Mentor data engineers, analysts, and junior architects; lead"design reviews,"threat modeling, and"cost/performance"reviews.
- Communicate clearly with technical and nontechnical stakeholders, champion a culture of"engineering excellence"and"learning., * Security & Governance:"IAM,"KMS,"Lake Formation,"Secrets Manager, data masking/tokenization, RBAC/ABAC.
- AI/LLM enablement:"Amazon Bedrock"(Knowledge Bases, Guardrails, Agents), embeddings, chunking, retrieval,"prompt design,"token optimization, evaluation loops.
- Observability & FinOps: Cloud logs/metrics, lineage/quality SLAs,"cost controls"(storage/compute), workload rightsizing.
- DevOps/MLOps/IaC:"Git,"CI/CD"for data pipelines;"Terraform/CDK; environment promotion; artifact/versioning; blue/green or canary for data jobs.
Requirements
- Bachelor's or master's in"computer science, Information Systems, Data Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
- Relevant certifications a plus (e.g.,"AWS Data Analytics/Solutions Architect ).
- 10+ years"designing and delivering enterprise data solutions, including"hands-on"work with both"traditional DBMS"and"cloud "data platforms.
- 5+ years"building on cloud platforms"with production experience in several of:"S3, Glue, Lake Formation, Redshift, Athena, EMR/Spark, Kinesis/MSK, Lambda, Step Functions, EventBridge, SageMaker.
- Demonstrated expertise implementing"data propagation Lakehouse"patterns and governance"at scale.
- Proven track record supporting"AI/ML"workloads (feature stores, model data pipelines) and delivering"RAG"solutions with vector search on AWS.
- Strong"SQL"and"Python; proficiency in"data modeling"-"IFC (),"3NF, dimensional/star, data vault, etc.
- DBMS:"SQL Server,"PostgreSQL"(schema, indexing, query planning, replication/HA, partitioning, backup/restore).
- Data Engineering:"Spark/EMR,"Glue"(ETL/ELT & Studio),"Airflow/Step Functions"orchestration,"Parquet/Delta/Iceberg., * Experience with"Redshift RA3/Spectrum,"materialized views,"workload management, and federated queries (Athena/Glue).
- Familiarity with"Power BI"/"Microsoft Fabric"and"Amazon Quick Sight; semantic modeling and governance for BI.
- Exposure to privacy enhancing technologies"(anonymization, differential privacy),"policy as code, and"guardrail"frameworks.
- Experience working with"geographically distributed teams"and"regulated data.
- Strategic thinking with the ability to balance short-term increments"and"long term architecture.
- Excellent written and verbal communication, facilitation of architecture decisions, and stakeholder alignment.
- Mentoring mindset and demonstrated influence without authority across cross functional teams.
Benefits & conditions
In addition to a competitive base salary and bonus potential, we offer a robust benefits package including a generous paid time off policy that includes vacation, personal days, health & wellness, and 2 days per year to give back in your local community, paid family leave, educational reimbursement, 401(k) matching, medical/dental/vision coverage, and a variety of other benefits to fit the needs of our employees.