Principal Data Architect

Job description

Description

We're Concentrix.

The global technology and services leader that powers the world’s best brands, today and into the future.

We’re solution-focused, tech-powered, intelligence-fueled.

With unique data and insights, deep industry expertise, and advanced technology solutions, we’re the intelligent transformation partner that powers a world that works, helping companies become refreshingly simple to work, interact, and transact with.

The Principal Data Architect is an enterprise leader who designs, implements, and governs enterprise-wide data architecture spanning HRIS, Financial Systems, Sales Data, and Client-Specific, and Operations Data.

This roles blends strategy and execution – defining technical standards, building scalable cloud and hybrid data platforms, and ensuring the delivery of high-quality, trusted data.

The principal data architect partners with data engineering, governance, security, and analytics to drive long-term data vision while solving complex architectural challenges in real time.

Key Responsibilities

• Define enterprise data blueprints including conceptual, logical, and physical data models.
• Establish canonical data models and a unified semantic layer across HRIS, Finance, Sales, and Operations data.
• Standardize data integration practices (batch, micro-batch, and streaming) using modern ETL/ELT frameworks.
• Develop architecture patterns for data lakes, data warehouses, and data lakehouse environments (e.g., Databricks, Snowflake, Synapse, BigQuery, Redshift).
• Ensure data designs are aligned with performance, scalability, and cost optimization across multi-cloud environments.
• Apply Kimball and Inmon methodologies for dimensional and denormalized modeling, selecting appropriately per use case.
• Drive data product thinking: domain-oriented ownership, versioned schema, backward compatibility, discoverability, and consumer contracts.
• Implement Agile DataOps and CI/CD pipelines for data model deployment and integration.
• Promote engineering fundamentals for data services (API driven patterns, resiliency, 12-factor as a guideline) and adopt architecture frameworks (e.g., TOGAF/Zachman) as appropriate for consistency.
• Ensure architecture supports event-driven design and streaming-first principles where appropriate.
• Champion open data formats/engines (Iceberg/Delta/Hudi; Dremio/Trino/Presto) to avoid lock-in and enable hybrid/on prem.
• Implement CDC and streaming patterns (Debezium + Schema Registry; Kafka/Kinesis/Pub/Sub) with materialized views.

Leadership & Management

• Work with leaders and ensure alignment to enterprise architecture.
• Partner with the Data Engineering Leader on pipeline architecture, tooling, and performance tuning.
• Partner with the Data Governance Leader on master data management (MDM), lineage, and cataloging standards.
• Directly lead a small team of data architects; set goals , coach growth, and run architecture reviews/ADRs and act as technical advisor to the VP of Enterprise Intelligence and other executives on data strategy.

Data Governance & Security 

• Champion metadata-first architecture, ensuring lineage and cataloging are embedded in all processes.
• Align with governance frameworks for RBAC/ABAC, PII/PHI handling, encryption (AES-256, TLS 1.3), and tokenization.
• Ensure compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, SOC2, CCPA and client-specific contractual obligations.
  
   
• Design for multi-tenant isolation (logical/physical), per tenant keys (KMS), auditability, retention, and data residency/sovereignty.

Analytics & Advanced Use Cases

• Champion metadata-first architecture, ensuring lineage and cataloging are embedded in all processes.
• Align with governance frameworks for RBAC/ABAC, PII/PHI handling, encryption (AES-256, TLS 1.3), and tokenization.
• Ensure compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, SOC2, CCPA and client-specific contractual obligations.
• Enable AI/ML and LLM Workloads: RAG patterns, vector search (pgvectore/FAISS/Weaviate/Pinecone), un/structured pipelines, prompt/response logging, and evalution telemetry.

Qualifications & Experience
Required:

• 12+ years in data architecture, data engineering, or BI leadership roles, with at least 5+ years in a principal or senior architect capacity.
• Proven experience managing data architecture and BI in multiple functional domains: HRIS, Finance, and Sales.
• Expertise with cloud-native data platforms.
• Deep understanding of data modeling techniques (3NF, star schema, data vault, wide tables, dimensional modeling).
• Hands-on experience building enterprise data warehouses and data lakes at scale (petabyte-level preferred).
• Strong knowledge of modern ETL/ELT orchestration tools (Airflow, dbt, Informatica, Talend, Fivetran, Matillion).
• Proficiency with SQL and at least one programming language used in data engineering (Python, Scala, or Java).
• Experience with real-time data streaming (Kafka, Kinesis, Pub/Sub).
• Solid grasp of data governance tools (Collibra, Alation, Purview) and best practices.
• AI data enablement; designing and operating AI-ready data architecture: RAG pipelines, vector search, unstructured data flows, prompt/responses logging, evaluation telemetry, and LLM safety/guardrailed (redaction, policy enforcement).
• Data quality & observability: contracts, schema/versioning, lineage, SLOs for freshness/latency/accuracy, anomaly detection, and incident management.
• Multi-tenant & residency: client isolation patterns, key-per tenant, retention, audit, and data sovereignty. 

Preferred:

• Experience in multi-tenant or BPO environments managing client-specific operational data.
• Familiarity with HRIS/ERP systems (Workday, Oracle EBS, SAP SuccessFactors) and financial planning platforms (Planful, Hyperion).
• Exposure to microservices architectures, API-driven data exchange, and event-driven design.
• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Data Science, or related field.
• Certifications in cloud architecture (AWS Certified Data Analytics, Azure Solutions Architect, Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer).
• CDC expertise (Debezium) and Schema Registry’ materialized view strategies
• Privacy-enhancing techniques (tokenization strategies, selective hashing/salting) and per region residency design

Leadership:

• Executive storytelling and influence without authority; ability to challenge constructively.
• Program leadership in Agile/SAFe environments; facilitation of architecture reviews/ADRs.
• Vendor/partner management (cloud/data tooling) and SOW/contract fluency.
• Clear, concise decision-making under pressure; incident and change communications.
• Outcome focus: cost/performance trade-offs, adoption, and time-to-data. 

 
In everything we do, we believe in doing right by and for people – our clients, their customers, our people, our community, and our planet.
Concentrix is an equal opportunity employer.
We're proudly united as one team, one company, globally.

We're committed to equal employment opportunities for all candidates and a work environment free from discrimination and harassment.

All our recruitment practices are based on business needs, job requirements, and professional qualifications, without regard to race, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, family or parental status, national origin, disability, or any other classification protected by applicable national laws.

The base salary range for this position is $140,000 - $200,000, plus incentives that align with individual and company performance.

Actual salaries will vary based on work location, qualifications, skills, education, experience, and competencies.

Benefits available to eligible employees in this role include medical, dental, and vision insurance, comprehensive employee assistance program, 401(k) retirement plan, paid time off and holidays.

Location:

Language Requirements:

Time Type:

Physical & Mental Requirements: While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to operate a computer, keyboard, telephone, headset, and other office equipment.

Work is generally sedentary in nature.

Required Skill Profession