Data Architect

Job Title: Data Architect

Experience: 12+ Years

Location: Onsite (Kochi) - Hybrid

Employment Type: Contract

We are looking for an experienced Data Architect to design and lead the development of scalable, secure, and high-performance cloud data platforms. The ideal candidate will bring strong expertise in Databricks, Azure data services, and modern lakehouse architectures, along with hands-on experience in data governance, metadata management, and enterprise data modeling.

In this role, you will collaborate closely with customers, architects, and engineering teams to define data architecture blueprints, guide implementation, and ensure solutions support analytics, reporting, and advanced AI/ML workloads.

Responsibilities

• Design and lead end-to-end architecture for cloud-based data ecosystems, including lakehouse and enterprise data platforms
• Translate business requirements into scalable architecture designs, roadmaps, and technical specifications
• Establish and enforce common data models across teams and systems
• Architect solutions for multi-tenant data sharing, customer-facing data access, and secure data exposure
• Design and implement Databricks-based architectures, including:
• Unity Catalog
• Delta Lake
• Databricks SQL
• Databricks Workflows
• Governance and security frameworks
• Handle Row-Level Security (RLS) from Databricks source data through analytics and reporting layers
• Define data modeling standards (relational, dimensional, and lakehouse) for global systems
• Architect and oversee ETL/ELT frameworks, source-to-target mappings, and metadata-driven transformation standards
• Establish best practices for data ingestion, curation, cataloging, lineage, data quality, and MDM (experience with Profisee preferred)
• Ensure architectural consistency, performance optimization, and security compliance across platforms
• Mentor and guide junior engineers through design reviews and architectural decision-making
• Design cloud-native reference architectures using Azure services such as ADF, ADLS, Azure SQL, Synapse Analytics, Stream Analytics, and related tools
• Collaborate with executive stakeholders to define data governance standards, metadata strategies, and taxonomy structures

Skills & Requirements:

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Engineering, MIS, or related field
• 12+ years of overall experience in data engineering or data platform development
• 3+ years in a Data Architect role
• 3+ years of Databricks experience, including Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, Databricks SQL, and workflows
• Strong proficiency in Python, Apache Spark, and distributed data processing
• Advanced SQL expertise, including tuning and optimization for large-scale datasets
• Proven experience designing lakehouse architectures and cloud data ecosystems
• Hands-on experience with Azure Data Services (ADF, ADLS, Azure SQL, Synapse Analytics, Stream Analytics, Fabric equivalents)
• Strong understanding of data modeling principles (3NF, Kimball, Inmon, dimensional modeling)
• Prior consulting experience delivering enterprise analytics or data platform solutions
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, ARM, Bicep)

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting multi-environment strategies using automated CI/CD and Git-based workflows
• Exposure to Microsoft Fabric or emerging analytics platforms
• Knowledge of Big Data ecosystems (HDFS, Hive, Pig, MapReduce)
• Experience with RDBMS and NoSQL systems (Oracle, DB2, MySQL, Cassandra, MongoDB, HBase, CouchDB)
• Hands-on experience with BI and reporting tools such as Power BI, Tableau, Qlik, Cognos, or MicroStrategy