Senior Data Architect
Department: Technology
Reports To: Vice President, Data Architecture
Location: Remote
FLSA Status: Exempt
People Leader: No
Travel: Less than 10%
Summary
Company Summary
Accuity partners with hospitals and health systems through a technology-enabled, physician-led model that improves clinical documentation integrity, coding accuracy, reimbursement optimization, and quality outcomes.
Job Summary
The Senior Data Architect serves as Accuity's senior technical authority for translating enterprise data strategy into domain architectures, reusable data product patterns, logical data models, governance controls, and actionable delivery roadmaps. Reporting to the Vice President, Data Architecture, this is a senior individual-contributor role with technical leadership responsibilities across Accuity's evolving data environment.
The role independently leads complex architecture and modeling decisions across domains, within authority delegated by the VP, Data Architecture. It partners with business owners, Data Architects, the Senior Manager, Data Operations, engineering and Azure teams, security and governance teams, and external providers.
The role provides data product leadership through requirements discovery, roadmaps, recommended priorities, and acceptance criteria. It agrees delivery sequencing with the Senior Manager, Data Operations, who retains staffing, delivery commitments, and operational coordination. Business data owners retain authority over business definitions, access approval, appropriate use, quality thresholds, and final business acceptance.
The Senior Data Architect leads cross-domain architecture, shared models, and reusable design standards. Data Operations retains detailed engineering design, implementation, testing, documentation, and production support across Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Enterprise strategy, investment, and final escalation remain with the VP, Data Architecture.
Responsibilities
Enterprise and Domain Architecture
- Translate the enterprise data strategy established by the Vice President, Data Architecture into domain architectures, standards, roadmaps, and implementable designs.
- Own data architecture across assigned business domains and data products, including boundaries, dependencies, integration patterns, and consumption approaches.
- Lead development of reusable architecture standards and integration patterns under VP direction; resolve cross-domain design conflicts within delegated authority and align shared definitions with business owners.
- Maintain architecture diagrams, shared models, standards, data contracts, decision records, exceptions, and technical debt; escalate strategic, investment, and material risk decisions to the VP.
Data Product Leadership
- Identify consumers, use cases, and expected business outcomes for assigned data products.
- Establish cross-domain product roadmaps and recommend modernization priorities; negotiate sequencing and dependencies with the Senior Manager, Data Operations, and escalate unresolved priorities to the VP.
- Lead discovery and decision sessions with business stakeholders, data owners, analysts, engineers, and external partners.
- Define requirements and acceptance criteria for quality, freshness, availability, reconciliation, retention, recovery, and performance with business owners and engineering teams; evaluate cost and supportability tradeoffs.
- Coordinate business acceptance and recommend when legacy data solutions and duplicated capabilities can be retired.
Data Modeling and Product Design
- Lead conceptual and logical modeling across domains and establish reusable dimensional and analytical design patterns and conformed entities.
- Define and document business grain, keys, relationships, facts, dimensions, and historical behavior; review detailed engineering models when shared definitions, dependencies, or significant risks are affected.
- Establish API, persisted dataset, file exchange, and integration patterns, balancing freshness, consistency, source availability, replay, auditability, security, and cost; resolve significant exceptions within delegated authority.
- Guide Bronze, Silver, and Gold designs, ensuring the Silver layer provides standardized, validated, reconciled, documented, and reusable data.
- Define data contracts for datasets and interfaces, including meaning, structure, freshness, intended use, ownership, versioning, compatibility, and consumer change notification.
- Partner with Data Engineers on model validation while they independently design detailed physical and dimensional models within approved architecture standards.
- Prevent legacy database structures, duplicated logic, and unnecessary complexity from being copied into the new platform without clear justification.
Data Governance and Unity Catalog
- Lead definition of Unity Catalog architecture standards for catalogs, schemas, naming, ownership, lineage, classification, and access patterns under Data Architecture leadership direction; engineers implement approved controls.
- Ensure important data products have named business owners, documented definitions, quality expectations, classifications, and lifecycle controls.
- Partner with security, governance, and business data owners to establish access, privacy, retention, and data-protection requirements.
- Promote group-based ownership and access rather than ownership by individual employees or vendors.
- Support business glossaries, metadata standards, lineage requirements, data contracts, and periodic governance reviews.
- Embed governance into product design and delivery rather than adding controls after implementation.
Technical Leadership and Delivery
- Work directly with the Senior Data Engineer and Data Engineers throughout design and delivery, providing timely decisions and resolving architectural questions.
- Lead risk-based architecture and model reviews for shared capabilities and significant changes; delegate routine decisions and resolve architecture exceptions within approved authority.
- Use SQL analysis, implementation reviews, and targeted prototypes with engineers to validate that designs are practical, performant, supportable, and effective in Azure Databricks.
- Guide migration architecture and sequencing across domains, including consolidation, dependencies, and retirement criteria. Review architectural readiness and engineering evidence for reconciliation, cutover, rollback, and recovery; business owners retain business acceptance.
- Partner with the Senior Azure Platform Engineer on Azure application and data services, APIs, health data and FHIR services, integrations, identity, connectivity, security, recovery, and platform dependencies.
MSP and Vendor Oversight
- Translate architectural standards into clear requirements and acceptance criteria for the managed service provider and other external partners.
- Review and approve MSP architecture, logical models, and data product designs within delegated authority, and verify conformance with Accuity standards.
- Identify unnecessary complexity, vendor dependency, architectural lock-in, and solutions that cannot be operated effectively by internal teams.
- Review architectural acceptance evidence and confirm knowledge transfer with engineering owners, who validate code, testing, runbooks, and operational readiness before accepting external deliverables.
Mentoring and Capability Development
- Mentor Data Architects and engineers in domain architecture, shared modeling, governance, integration design, and decision-making; build capability for independent ownership.
- Mentor employees who may progress into architecture or senior engineering positions.
- Help SQL Server and SSIS professionals transition to modern data engineering, lakehouse, and product-oriented practices.
- Establish repeatable reviews, templates, examples, and reference designs that improve Accuity's internal architecture and modeling maturity.
Collaboration and Decision Boundaries
- Serve as a senior technical advisor to the Vice President, Data Architecture and represent the VP in appropriate architecture and delivery discussions.
- Work with business leaders, Engineering, Data Science and AI, Platform Management, Enterprise IT, Security, and Governance on shared data capabilities and dependencies.
- Support the VP of Data Architecture while recognizing that enterprise strategy, investment decisions, organizational direction, and final escalation remain with the VP.
- Facilitate and document business decisions while recognizing that business data owners remain accountable for definitions, access approval, appropriate use, quality thresholds, and acceptance.
- Partner with Data Operations, which owns implementation and production operation of assigned data assets across Bronze, Silver, and Gold; the Senior Data Engineer leads complex engineering, reusable implementation patterns, and data API development.
- Partner with the Senior Azure Platform Engineer, who owns Azure platform operations and assigned application, integration, and health data services. Agree a named engineering and operational owner for each API or service, including support and escalation boundaries.
Other Duties as Assigned
- Perform additional responsibilities as needed to support data architecture, technology delivery, and organizational goals.
Qualifications
Education and Credentials
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, data management, engineering, or a related field preferred.
- Equivalent professional experience, technical training, or a combination of education and relevant experience may be considered.
- Relevant Azure, Databricks, architecture, data management, or data governance certification preferred.
Experience
- 8+ years of progressive experience in data architecture, data warehousing, business intelligence, analytics engineering, or enterprise data delivery.
- 3+ years leading data architecture, senior data design, or comparable technical initiatives with independent decision-making responsibility.
- Deep experience with conceptual, logical, dimensional, and analytical data modeling, including grain, keys, relationships, reusable entities, and historical behavior.
- Experience translating business outcomes into domain architectures, data product requirements, acceptance criteria, and delivery roadmaps.
- Experience resolving data definitions, dependencies, and design conflicts across multiple business domains.
- Demonstrated production architecture and modernization experience with Azure Databricks, Delta Lake, medallion architecture, and Unity Catalog, including decisions affecting multiple domains.
- Experience with data governance, metadata, lineage, quality, access controls, privacy, retention, and lifecycle management.
- Experience influencing senior business and technology stakeholders and facilitating decisions among groups with competing priorities.
- Strong SQL and practical implementation-review skills to validate models and diagnose discrepancies; experience establishing API and data contract standards, evaluating integration tradeoffs, and guiding engineering delivery.
- Experience reviewing work delivered by consultants, managed service providers, or other external technology partners.
- Experience in a regulated or security-sensitive environment, healthcare preferred.
Core Competencies
- Enterprise and Domain Thinking: Connects individual data products and domain decisions to Accuity's broader enterprise architecture and business strategy.
- Business and Technical Translation: Converts business outcomes and operational needs into clear models, requirements, standards, and delivery decisions.
- Data Modeling: Applies strong conceptual, logical, dimensional, and analytical modeling judgment to create trustworthy and reusable data structures.
- Data Product Leadership: Maintains focus on consumers, priorities, acceptance, adoption, and measurable business value.
- Pragmatic Decision Making: Balances consistency, delivery speed, supportability, security, cost, and long-term maintainability.
- Cross-Domain Problem Solving: Resolves conflicting definitions, dependencies, and designs without allowing local decisions to fragment the enterprise architecture.
- Stakeholder Facilitation: Leads productive decisions among business owners, subject-matter experts, engineers, and technology leaders.
- Governance and Risk Awareness: Treats ownership, quality, access, privacy, lineage, and lifecycle management as design requirements.
- Technical Mentoring: Builds architecture and modeling capability in engineers and developing technical leaders.
- Influence Without Direct Authority: Establishes direction and accountability through expertise, judgment, communication, and trusted relationships.
- Vendor Oversight: Challenges external recommendations, validates deliverables, prevents avoidable dependency, and protects internal ownership of knowledge and solutions.
- Documentation Discipline: Records architecture, decisions, definitions, dependencies, and standards as part of delivery rather than after the fact.
- Remote-Work Effectiveness: Communicates proactively, documents decisions, and maintains visibility into work in a fully remote organization.
Additional Requirements
- Physical Requirements: The requirements described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job with or without reasonable accommodations. Unless otherwise indicated, Accuity positions require interaction with people and technology while either sitting or standing. Employees must be able to communicate via phone, email, etc. and sit for extended periods of time, with or without reasonable accommodations. Physical effort and exposure to physical risk are limited to that of an office role / environment.
- Position and Employment Statement: While this job description is intended to be an accurate reflection of the job requirements, management reserves the right to modify, add or remove duties from a job and to assign other duties as necessary and at any time. All positions at Accuity Delivery Systems, LLC, are at-will employment, and a position description is not a guarantee of a job or of job responsibilities.
While this job description is intended to be an accurate reflection of the job requirements, management reserves the right to modify, add or remove duties from a job and to assign other duties as necessary and at any time. All positions at Accuity are at-will employment, and a position description is not a guarantee of a job or of job responsibilities.
