Data Architect
Lead the data architecture for a federal modernization program covering permitting and natural resource management, designing an AWS lakehouse (S3, Apache Iceberg, AWS Glue, DuckDB) with metadata-driven ingestion, agentic/AI pipelines, document processing, and geospatial integration into a governed canonical data model.
- Compensation
- Not disclosed
- Location
- Bethesda, MD
- Work setup
- Remote
- Seniority
- Not specified
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- 10+ years
- Category
- Architecture
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related technical discipline
- 10+ years of experience in data architecture, data engineering, or software engineering, including leadership of modern data platform initiatives
- Demonstrated experience designing cloud-based data lakehouse or analytical platforms
- Hands-on experience with DuckDB, Apache Iceberg, SQL, Python, and AWS data services including Amazon S3 and AWS Glue
- Experience designing medallion-style architectures, canonical data models, and metadata-driven ingestion and transformation frameworks
- Experience integrating databases, APIs, files, streaming/event sources, and enterprise SaaS applications
- Experience architecting or implementing agentic or AI-enabled solutions, including orchestration, tool integration, validation, observability, security, and human-in-the-loop controls
- Strong understanding of data contracts, schema evolution, lineage, provenance, reconciliation, and data quality
- Experience providing architectural leadership to multidisciplinary technical teams and translating business requirements into scalable technical solutions
- Strong written and verbal communication skills
Nice to have
- Experience with Kafka or Amazon MSK and CDC architectures
- Experience with OpenSearch, vector databases, embeddings, or document retrieval systems
- Experience with agentic frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, or similar orchestration frameworks
- Experience designing geospatial data architectures using GeoParquet and PostGIS
- Experience with Salesforce, ServiceNow, Microsoft Dataverse, or similar enterprise platforms
- Experience working in the U.S. Federal Government space
- Experience with permitting, land management, environmental, energy, or natural-resource datasets
Full description
Overview
We are seeking a Data Architect to lead the data architecture for a federal modernization initiative supporting permitting and natural resource management systems.
The Data Architect will define and guide implementation of a modern AWS lakehouse that consolidates structured, document, geospatial, and event-driven data from multiple source systems into a governed canonical model. The role will establish architectural patterns for metadata-driven and agentic data engineering, data quality, document processing, GIS integration, and governed data products.
The environment includes Amazon S3, Apache Iceberg, AWS Glue Catalog, DuckDB, Kafka/Amazon MSK, OpenSearch, GeoParquet, and PostGIS.
This position is remote with periodic travel as required.
Duties & Responsibilities
- Serve as the primary architecture authority for the data workstream.
- Define the end-to-end data architecture spanning ingestion, bronze/silver/gold processing, document pipelines, GIS processing, analytical data products, and downstream services.
- Design the lakehouse architecture using Amazon S3, Apache Iceberg, AWS Glue Catalog, and DuckDB.
- Define reusable patterns for batch, API, file, database, CDC, and event-driven ingestion.
- Establish a metadata-driven architecture that supports configuration-based source onboarding and source-to-canonical mappings.
- Define and govern the common canonical data model used to harmonize information across source systems.
- Establish data contracts and standards for lineage, provenance, reconciliation, schema evolution, auditability, and data quality.
- Define architecture patterns for agentic solutions supporting source analysis, mapping, pipeline generation, testing, reconciliation, and quality assurance.
- Establish controls for agentic workflows, including validation, observability, security, deterministic execution, and human review where required.
- Coordinate architecture across structured data, OCR/document processing, vector search, and geospatial data.
- Provide architectural direction and design review across the data engineering, data science, GIS, and content pipeline teams.
- Work with Government stakeholders and technical teams to translate business and domain requirements into scalable data models and services.
- Maintain architecture standards, technical decisions, interface specifications, and implementation guidance.
- Support technical handoff and knowledge transfer to Government and operations teams.