Senior Data Architect

RS21 is a dynamic and rapidly growing company with 65+ employees doing good with data to make a significant impact. Our nine core values empower a culture of integrity, learning, risk-taking, creativity, and consistent improvement. We prioritize helping our team achieve a healthy work-life balance with flexible schedules and remote work options. As a testament to our exceptional culture, we were named a Fast Company Best Workplace for Innovators.

We are currently seeking a Data Architect who can stand up enterprise data platforms to deliver novel, decision-ready information for high-profile clients. The RS21 Data Engineering division consists of data engineers and data architects who are dedicated to developing best-in-class data platforms to help solve some of today's most challenging business problems. They work collaboratively with the other RS21 functional divisions to develop high performing, cutting-edge data solutions to help business stakeholders make critical decisions based on trustworthy data, presented in a way to highlight meaningful insights.

We're looking for a Data Architect who's excited to spearhead the delivery of elegant, big data platforms, and to do so by providing exceptional leadership to a team of Data Engineers, Analysts and QA. We're creating world class systems to make our world a better place, and these systems require world class skills.

This is a full-time position reporting to the Chief Solutions Architect.

Responsibilities:

• Develops and oversees development of production-quality data platforms.
• Designs and develops data integration strategies to ensure the right data into the data solutions to support the data analytics use cases.
• Mentors a team of data engineers to build the skills required to work effectively with business stakeholders to derive functional and technical requirements from business objectives and needs.
• Identifies best practices regarding data collection, storage, integration, warehousing, and lifecycle management. Develops standards and procedures to ensure those best practices are known and implemented consistently.
• Conceptualize, design, model and deploy data models (conceptual, logical, and physical) to specifically address client business needs.
• Meets with prospective customers and contributes to proposal development, initial project planning, and project cost estimation.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree with 10+ years of experience developing modern data platforms from conception to post-deployment.
• Ability to obtain Public Trust
• Experience with modern data warehousing solutions: Redshift, Snowflake, Databricks
• Experience in building cloud-native data platforms on AWS, leveraging services like S3, Redshift, Lambda, Athena, and others for scalable data solutions.
• Expert level experience with Python and SQL
• Experience with distributed frameworks (Spark, Trino, Flink)
• Experience designing, developing, and managing modern data platforms such as data warehouses, data lakes and/or data lakehouses.
• Experience with distributed streaming frameworks (Flink, Spark Structured Streaming, Kafka)
• Excellent leadership skills, written and verbal communication skills, and experience interfacing with prospective or existing business stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to accept strategic guidance from leadership and transform that guidance into an actionable plan with a clear path of execution.
• Experience mentoring technical teams.
• Experience managing an enterprise-level data solution through the entire software lifecycle.
• Experience gathering requirements, deriving functional and technical specifications, and defining and prioritizing the necessary tasks needed to fulfill those requirement and specifications according to the project's period of performance (PoP).
• Experience defining and implementing data governance rules to address business needs, regulatory requirements, and data sensitivity.
• Demonstrated understanding of data security best practices and experience integrating data security safeguards to prevent accidental and/or intentional privacy breaches and data misuse.

Nice to Have:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or similar field.
• Experience working with state, local, and federal agencies.
• Experience using NoSQL databases in production systems.
• Familiarity with languages such as Java, Scala, Go, or Rust, especially in cloud-native or distributed data environments.
• Experience working with open table formats such as Iceberg, Delta, Hudi.
• Data mapping between source systems, data warehouses, and data marts.
• Prior experience implementing business rules via stored procedures, middleware, or other technologies.
• Familiarity with developing and implementing data extraction procedures from other systems.
• Develop or maintain standards, such as organization, structure, or nomenclature, for the design of data warehouse elements, such as data architectures, models, tools, and databases.
• Create supporting documentation, such as metadata and diagrams of entity relationships, business processes, and process flow.
• Create plans, test files, and scripts for data warehouse testing, ranging from unit to integration testing.

RS21 is committed to transparent and fair compensation. The final salary within this range will be determined based on relevant experience. Comprehensive benefits include flexible paid time off, medical, dental, and vision insurance with a generous employer contribution to premiums for employees and their dependents, a 401k plan with a 3% employer safe harbor contribution, and more.

Pay range

$145,000-$185,000 USD

About RS21:
RS21 is a rapidly growing data science company that uses artificial intelligence, design, data engineering, and modern software development methods to empower organizations to make data-driven decisions that positively impact the world. Our innovative solutions are insightful, intuitive, inspiring, and intellectually honest. With teams in Albuquerque, NM, Washington, DC, and distributed throughout the United States, RS21 is an Inc. 5000 fastest-growing company two years in a row and a Fast Company Best Workplace for Innovators

We help clients achieve programmatic goals, improve efficiencies, reduce costs, and maximize productivity using MOTHR, our AI engine, that allows users to seamlessly integrate data and reveal insights at hyper speed. We navigate complex data issues in the fields of healthcare, defense, safety, urban planning, energy, cyber, land use, climate, disaster preparedness, disaster recovery, space, and social equity.

---