Staff Data Architect, CNN Data Analytics, Science & Insights.

Description

The role is the Staff Data Architect, CNN Data Analytics, Science & Insights, a senior, hands-on platform position at a global media and entertainment company with three segments: Studios, Direct-to-Consumer, and TV Media.

The team runs a digital news business that is changing quickly and needs people to help shape its growth and the future of news.

You will design the data architecture, modeling standards and governed data systems that feed analytics, reporting and decisions across the organization, and you will mentor engineers and analysts while working closely with platform and analytics colleagues.

The work centers on shortening time to insight, keeping metrics consistent, and building semantic data models that people can trust on a high-volume analytics platform.

Responsibilities

• Design and build scalable Snowflake architecture for high-volume event and analytics workloads, focusing on performance, security and cost through query tuning, warehouse sizing, storage management and governance practices.
• Lead the design and delivery of complex data systems and platform upgrades, and set and maintain architecture and modeling standards across Snowflake and dbt so that systems stay consistent, scalable and reliable.
• Create secure, scalable data access patterns using role-based access control and managed access schemas, so data stays governed and auditable and reaches the right people.
• Build and run data quality and observability frameworks with dbt tests and monitoring tools to track pipeline health, latency and freshness, and keep improving reliability and visibility.
• Work with platform engineering and analytics teams to raise system reliability, scalability and operating efficiency, and contribute to platform architecture planning and technical roadmaps.
• Turn complex analytics and business needs into clean, governed semantic models that support self-service analytics and consistent metrics across BI tools.
• Define and implement data lifecycle and retention strategies that balance performance, cost, compliance and availability across the analytics platform.
• Mentor engineers and analysts, build their skills, and raise the standard for data architecture and engineering practice.

Requirements

• 5-8 years of experience in data engineering, data architecture or a related field, including ownership of production data systems or platform components.
• Deep experience with cloud data warehousing and hands-on Snowflake work, including performance tuning, security design, cost optimization and large-scale data modeling.
• Strong experience building and maintaining dbt transformation workflows, including testing, performance work and deployment practices.
• Experience with event or clickstream data, ideally with Snowplow or similar tools, and a solid grasp of instrumentation and processing challenges at scale.
• Proven record of building semantic layers and analytics-ready models that act as a trusted source of truth for BI tools such as Looker, Tableau or Domo.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical ideas to non-technical audiences, shape architecture decisions and align teams.
• Nice to have: experience with Customer Data Platforms (CDPs).
• Nice to have: experience with data orchestration tools such as Airflow or Dagster.
• Nice to have: familiarity with data privacy and compliance requirements such as GDPR or CCPA.
• Nice to have: experience in the media, publishing or digital content industry.

Conditions

Base pay ranges from $136,500.00 to $253,500.00 per year.

Actual pay depends on factors such as location, external market data, internal equity, skills, experience, training, education and performance.

Base pay is one part of total compensation, which may also include annual bonuses, short- and long-term incentives and program-specific awards.

Accommodations are available during the application and recruitment process for qualified candidates with a disability; use the accessibility page to request them.

Benefits

• Health insurance coverage.
• Employee wellness program.
• Life and disability insurance.
• Retirement savings plan.
• Paid holidays, sick time and vacation.