Data Architect (Microsoft Fabric)

Description

You will be a foundational architect for a new enterprise data platform, built mainly on Microsoft Fabric, that the company is creating from scratch. It will bring governed data from real-time operational events and historical records across technology domains together, to support reporting, analytics, automation, AI, and reusable data products.

You will set the target architecture, modeling and organization standards, integration patterns, security and governance framework, and engineering practices. Often there is little precedent, so you will weigh competing approaches and tradeoffs yourself. The data covers IT service management, employee and workplace technology, endpoints and assets, identity and access, infrastructure and networks, collaboration tools, operational telemetry, and master and reference data.

You will also lead the delivery team technically, turning architecture and business needs into engineering work, including epics, stories, tasks, dependencies, and sequencing, with work assigned to the right people and teams and hands-on guidance through implementation.

The company is a major media and entertainment business with film, television, streaming, news, and theme park operations.

Responsibilities

• Define the end-to-end Microsoft Fabric architecture, covering OneLake, Lakehouse, Warehouse, Data Factory, Real-Time Intelligence, Eventstream and Eventhouse, notebooks, and semantic models, for cross-domain operations and technology use cases.
• Set up the base architecture for the new platform, including standards, environments, workspace layout, security boundaries, deployment patterns, and operating principles.
• Lead the delivery team by breaking objectives into epics, stories, and tasks, mapping dependencies and order, and routing work to suitable people and teams.
• Bring fragmented operational data into one discoverable ecosystem using domain data products, authoritative sources, shared datasets, and common data contracts.
• Design solutions across IT service management, workplace technology, endpoints, identity, infrastructure, networks, collaboration, telemetry, logs, events, and reference data, assessing cross-domain dependencies and tradeoffs.
• Design architectures that combine streaming and event data with historical, transactional, master, and reference data for visibility, analytics, automation, and AI.
• Create scalable patterns for raw, enriched, and curated layers, including Delta lakehouse designs, warehouse workloads, OneLake shortcuts, virtualization, partitioning, optimization, retention, and performance.
• Set modeling principles, canonical entities, conformed dimensions, shared business definitions, and semantic standards, choosing dimensional, normalized, domain-oriented, or hybrid approaches as each case requires.
• Define reusable, resilient ingestion, transformation, and orchestration patterns for APIs, databases, SaaS platforms, files, CDC, batch processing, and event streams.
• Work with security, privacy, and governance teams on access control, metadata, lineage, classification, data ownership, contracts, quality standards, retention, and lifecycle controls.
• Write and maintain target-state architectures, reference designs, decision records, data flow diagrams, technical standards, reusable patterns, and implementation roadmaps.
• Set expectations for source control, CI/CD, environment promotion, infrastructure and configuration automation, testing, monitoring, deployment controls, and releases.
• Lead design reviews and advise teams on major technical decisions so their work matches the architecture, security requirements, performance goals, and engineering standards.

Requirements

• A bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, information systems, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• 8+ years in data engineering, data architecture, solution architecture, or similar roles, including designing, building, or substantially evolving enterprise-scale data platforms.
• Proven ability to turn architecture and technical strategy into roadmaps, epics, stories, tasks, and implementation plans.
• Experience leading technically across multidisciplinary engineering teams or complex technical programs.
• Solid experience designing lakehouse and/or warehouse architectures with layered patterns from raw ingestion through curated, consumable datasets.
• Deep SQL skills and working proficiency in Python and/or PySpark for engineering, automation, prototyping, and technical validation.
• Experience architecting data solutions on Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft Azure, or comparable enterprise cloud data platforms.
• Experience designing both batch and real-time or event-driven data solutions.
• Good understanding of APIs, data integration, distributed data processing, and enterprise integration patterns.
• Experience designing secure, scalable, observable, and supportable production data platforms.
• Strong grasp of data modeling, metadata, lineage, governance, and data quality principles.
• Ability to weigh tradeoffs independently across scalability, reliability, maintainability, security, cost, and business requirements, and to make sound architecture decisions.
• Strong written and verbal communication, able to explain architecture to engineers, product teams, stakeholders, and senior leaders.
• Comfortable working in a greenfield setting where standards, processes, and patterns are still being set.

Conditions

Fully remote: you work from a non-company location, most often your home.

Salary range: $120,000 to $140,000, bonus eligible.

For LA County and City of Los Angeles residents, applicants with criminal histories are considered in line with local fair chance laws.

Benefits

• Eligible for company-sponsored benefits, including medical, dental, and vision insurance, 401(k), paid leave, tuition reimbursement, and a range of discounts and perks.