Senior Data Architect

CLA is a top 10 national professional services firm where our purpose is to create opportunities every day, for our clients, our people, and our communities through industry-focused wealth advisory, digital, audit, tax, consulting, and outsourcing services. Even with more than 8,500 people, 130 U.S. locations, and a global reach, we promise to know you and help you.

CLA is dedicated to building a culture that invites different beliefs and perspectives to the table, so we can truly know and help our clients, communities, and each other.

Our Perks:

• Flexible PTO (designed to offer flexible time away for you)
• Up to 12 weeks paid parental leave
• Paid Volunteer Time Off
• Mental health coverage
• Quarterly Wellness stipend
• Fertility benefits
• Complete list of benefits here

CLA is growing and seeking to hire an experienced Senior Data Architect to join our talented Information Technology team. The position offers growth, flexibility and a collaborative work environment.

The Senior Data Architect is responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining the organization's enterprise data architecture to support analytics, business intelligence, and operational systems. This role ensures that data assets are structured, governed, and optimized for scalability, performance, and compliance. The architect collaborates across teams — including data engineering, enterprise architecture, solution development and with business stakeholders — to align data strategy with organizational goals. An ideal candidate will also bring proven architecture experience in Master Data Management (MDM), including the design and integration of shared, authoritative data domains that improve consistency and interoperability across enterprise systems.

How you'll create opportunities in this Senior Data Architect role:

Data Architecture and Strategy

• Design and develop scalable data architecture solutions.
• Lead the design and evolution of CLA's enterprise data architecture, ensuring alignment with the firm's digital vision.
• Define patterns and standards for data ingestion, modeling, storage, and consumption across the Lakehouse and microservice layers.
• Translating business needs into scalable architectural designs supporting application development, analytics, dashboards, and AI initiatives.
• Contribute to the ongoing development of CLA's data reference architecture, including governance and integration blueprints.

Platform Design and Implementation

• Partner with engineering teams to design and implement the Lakehouse (e.g., Databricks, Delta Lake, Synapse) and reference microservices for data delivery and abstraction.
• Define standardized data models and reusable interfaces that drive consistency across data domains, including integration of MDM hubs and shared reference data services.
• Guide implementation of streaming and batch data pipelines, ensuring quality, lineage, and observability.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend fit-for-purpose tools that enhance the data ecosystem.

Data Governance and Quality

• Collaborate with Data Governance and Risk teams to embed metadata management, lineage, and stewardship practices.
• Define and enforce data quality frameworks across ingestion, transformation, and publishing layers.
• Support compliance with firm policies and external regulations (e.g., SOC, GDPR, privacy requirements).

Collaboration and Leadership

• Partner with solution architects, product owners, data engineers, and business analysts to ensure solutions meet both technical and functional needs.
• Provide technical mentorship to data engineers and promote architectural best practices.
• Act as a trusted advisor to leadership on data strategy, modernization, and emerging trends (e.g., DaaS, Centralized Platform, Data Lakehouse, generative AI readiness).
• Champion the data vision across business lines, helping stakeholders understand how modern data architecture, including MDM and unified data governance, accelerates CLA's mission to create opportunities for our clients, people, and communities.

What you will need:

• 5 years of experience required.
• Azure experience required.
• Databricks experience required.
• Bachelor's degree or a combination of relevant experience and training may be considered in lieu of a degree.

Technical Competencies:

• Proficiency in SQL, NoSQL, and distributed data technologies.
• Deep understanding of data architecture principles, including modeling, lineage, and metadata management.
• Experience designing and integrating MDM or reference data solutions to enable enterprise data consistency.
• Strong grasp of data governance, data quality, and compliance frameworks (e.g., GDPR, SOC, privacy standards).
• Knowledge of data mining, data integration, and segmentation techniques for analytical and operational use cases.
• Hands-on experience with modern cloud data platforms, particularly Databricks and Microsoft Azure ecosystems

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Wellness at CLA

To support our CLA family members, we focus on their physical, financial, social, and emotional well-being and offer comprehensive benefit options that include health, dental, vision, 401k and much more.

To view a complete list of benefits click here.