McLaren Strategic Solutions is seeking a Senior Data Architect to play a critical role in a complex enterprise data platform modernization assessment.

The successful candidate will establish a fact-based view of the current data landscape, define a future-state zoned lakehouse architecture, identify architectural and governance gaps, and contribute to a phased migration roadmap that ensures scalability, data quality, security, and operational efficiency.

Key Responsibilities :

- Conduct comprehensive current-state assessment of existing data platforms, including ingestion patterns, storage structures, processing flows, data quality issues, and downstream consumption patterns.

- Define target-state lakehouse architecture with clear zoned layers (raw/bronze, standardized/silver, curated/gold) incorporating modern data management principles.

- Design enterprise data models (conceptual, logical, and physical), data contracts, schema evolution strategies, and canonical data structures.

- Establish data governance, security, access control, lineage, and observability frameworks aligned with regulatory and compliance requirements.

- Evaluate and recommend Databricks-native capabilities including Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, Delta Live Tables, and lakehouse monitoring.

- Perform detailed gap analysis across architecture, data quality controls, pipeline design, partitioning, governance, and operational readiness.

- Contribute to the phased migration roadmap, sequencing strategy, thin-slice recommendations, and risk mitigation approaches.

- Collaborate closely with the Principal Architect, Solution Architects, Data Engineers, and Senior Business Analyst to ensure data architecture aligns with overall target-state vision and business requirements.

- Support creation of the executive decision pack and implementation readiness blueprint.

Required Qualifications & Experience :

- 10+ years of experience in enterprise data architecture and data platform design

- 7+ years of hands-on experience designing and implementing modern data lakes / lakehouse solutions at enterprise scale

- Proven track record leading data modernization initiatives, including migration, quality, and governance programs

- Strong experience with large-scale, multi-source data platforms supporting batch and streaming workloads

Technical Skills :

- Core Platforms : Databricks (Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, Delta Live Tables, Auto Loader, Lakehouse Monitoring), Snowflake (exposure)

- Data Modeling & Architecture : Conceptual, logical, physical modeling, dimensional modeling, data contracts, schema evolution

- ETL/ELT & Processing : PySpark, Spark SQL, structured streaming, incremental processing, CDC

- Governance & Quality : Data lineage, access controls, quality frameworks, schema enforcement, partitioning & optimization (Z-Ordering, Liquid Clustering)

- Additional : Data profiling, reconciliation, observability, security & compliance patterns, IaC for data infrastructure

Preferred Qualifications :

- Experience with legacy data platform assessments and migration to cloud-native lakehouse architectures

- Strong background in multi-tenant data platforms and data separation strategies

- Prior exposure to regulated or high-volume transactional data environments

Locations :

- Bangalore

- Goa