Principal GCP Data Architect

Principal GCP Data Architect

Role Overview

We are seeking a visionary and experienced Principal GCP Data Architect to lead the design and implementation of our next-generation enterprise data platform on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This role is crucial for defining our holistic data strategy, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, highly performant, and aligned with our critical business objectives, including advanced analytics, Machine Learning (ML), and data governance.

Key Responsibilities

·       Data Strategy & Roadmap: Define the end-to-end data architecture strategy and roadmap on GCP, including data acquisition, ingestion, storage, processing, consumption, and archival.

·       Architectural Design: Design and document conceptual, logical, and physical data models and solution architectures utilizing a broad range of GCP services, such as BigQuery, Cloud Storage, Dataflow/Dataproc, Pub/Sub.

·       Platform Leadership: Serve as the subject matter expert (SME) for the GCP data ecosystem, providing technical leadership and guidance to data engineering Team.

·       Security & Governance: Establish and enforce enterprise-wide data governance, quality, security (IAM, VPC Service Controls), and compliance frameworks within the GCP environment.

·       Performance & Cost Optimization: Lead initiatives for cost optimization and performance tuning across the data platform, particularly for large-scale BigQuery and streaming solutions.

·        Evaluation & POCs: Evaluate new GCP data services, third-party tools, and technologies (e.g., Databricks, Fivetran) through Proof-of-Concepts (POCs) to recommend the best fit for business requirements.

·       Collaboration: Partner with business stakeholders, product owners, and other architects (Cloud, Security) to translate complex business needs into robust, scalable technical blueprints.

Required Skills

Experience: 8+ years of experience in data warehousing, data modeling, and ETL/ELT, with 5+ years hands-on experience as a Data Architect on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
• GCP Expertise: Deep, hands-on expertise in architecting solutions using core GCP services:
• Data Warehousing: BigQuery (advanced query optimization, clustering, partitioning).
• Streaming/Batch: Cloud Dataflow (Apache Beam), Pub/Sub, Dataproc (Spark/Hadoop).
• Storage: Cloud Storage (GCS) for Data Lake architecture.
• Databases: Cloud SQL, Cloud Spanner, or Firestore.
• Data Modeling: Expert-level proficiency in designing data models (3NF, Dimensional, Data Vault) for analytical and operational workloads.
• Programming & Scripting: Strong proficiency in Python and advanced SQL and Unix Shell Scripting.

Soft Skills: Excellent verbal and written communication skills with the ability to explain complex architectural decisions to technical and non-technical audiences.

Preferred Skills

• Familiarity with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes/GKE, Cloud Composer/Airflow).
• Experience in Master Data Management (MDM) and Data Lineage tools and concepts.
• Experience with hybrid or multi-cloud data environments.

• Experience integrating Machine Learning (ML) pipelines using Vertex AI or MLOps principles.