Elixir Labs - Azure Data Architect - Performance Tuning

Description :

We are seeking an experienced Data Architect with deep expertise in designing and implementing scalable, secure, and high-performance cloud data platforms.

The ideal candidate will possess strong hands-on experience with Databricks, comprehensive knowledge of Azure data services, and proven architectural leadership in building modern data ecosystems.

These ecosystems should support enterprise analytics, reporting, metadata management, data governance, and advanced AI and machine learning workloads.

In this role, the Data Architect will collaborate closely with customers, business stakeholders, and engineering teams to define architectural blueprints, guide implementation teams, and ensure that data solutions align with both business and technical objectives.

The successful candidate will be responsible for setting technical direction, enforcing architectural standards, and ensuring the delivery of robust, future-ready data platforms.

Key Responsibilities :

The Data Architect will design and lead end-to-end architectures for complex cloud-based data ecosystems, including enterprise data platforms and lakehouse architectures.

Responsibilities :

- Include translating business requirements into scalable architectural designs, technical specifications, and implementation roadmaps.

This includes advanced use cases such as defining common data models across multiple development teams, enabling secure data sharing from multi-tenant systems to customers, integrating Databricks with external data platforms, and implementing row-level security (RLS) from Databricks source data through analytics and reporting tools.

The role requires hands-on leadership in architecting and implementing Databricks-based solutions, leveraging technologies such as Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, Databricks SQL, workflow orchestration, and governance frameworks.

In addition to technical architecture, the architect will define and enforce enterprise data governance policies, ensuring compliance, security, and data quality.

The architect will establish and maintain data modeling standards for relational, dimensional, and lakehouse structures, including global common data models.

They will oversee the design and development of ETL/ELT frameworks, source-to-target mappings, reusable transformation standards, and metadata-driven solutions.

Best practices for data ingestion, curation, cataloging, lineage, data quality, and master data management (MDM) will be defined and implemented, with preference for experience using Profisee.

The Data Architect will partner with cross-functional engineering teams to ensure architectural consistency, performance optimization, scalability, and security compliance.

They will mentor junior engineers, lead design reviews, and contribute to architectural decision-making. Additionally, the role includes developing cloud-native reference architectures using Azure Data Factory, Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure SQL, Synapse Analytics, Stream Analytics, and other modern Azure services.

Collaboration with executive stakeholders and fellow architects is essential to define data governance standards, taxonomy structures, and metadata strategies, as well as to clearly communicate and defend architectural decisions to customers.

Minimum Qualifications :

- Candidates must hold a Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Engineering, MIS, or a related field, with 12+ years of overall experience, including a strong background in data engineering or data platform development and at least 3+ years in a data architecture role.

- A minimum of 3 years of Databricks experience is required, along with strong proficiency in Python, Apache Spark, and advanced SQL performance tuning.

- Hands-on experience with Azure data services, lakehouse architectures, enterprise data warehousing concepts, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code tools is essential.

- Prior consulting experience delivering enterprise analytics or data platform solutions is strongly preferred.

Preferred Qualifications :

- Preferred candidates will have experience with Microsoft Fabric or emerging analytics platforms, exposure to big data and NoSQL ecosystems, and hands-on experience with BI and reporting tools such as Power BI, Tableau, Qlik, Cognos, or MicroStrategy.