Senior Solutions Architect
Posted Updated
- We are seeking a Principal Solutions Architect to define the architecture for a governed, zero-copy, cross-cloud data platform, establishing the design standards and integration priorities that guide the engineering team
- Working across Databricks, Snowflake, and adjacent cloud data sources, this leader will translate an evolving product vision into concrete design specifications and a clear path toward agent-based data consumption, while ensuring alignment with the organization’s existing enterprise engineering practices
- The role is accountable for owning the end-to-end solution architecture of a governed, zero-copy data platform in which data remains in place within its source systems
- Solution Architecture Ownership: Own the end-to-end solution architecture for a governed, zero-copy data platform in which data remains in place within its source systems, working across Databricks, Snowflake, and adjacent cloud data sources
- Architecture Artifacts and Standards: Produce architecture artifacts — decision records, reference architectures, and solution diagrams — establish the design standards that guide the engineering team, and provide clear build-versus-integrate recommendations
- Catalog and Metadata Integration: Define and prioritize catalog and metadata integration patterns across cloud and lakehouse environments
- Agent-Based Access Design: Design agent- and MCP-based access patterns that expose governed data products to enterprise AI tools and agent platforms
- Future-State Direction: Establish future-state direction for data products, cross-source data composition, and agentic consumption, translating an evolving product vision into concrete design specifications
- Enterprise Alignment: Ensure alignment with the organization’s existing enterprise engineering practices while guiding the engineering team toward a clear path for agent-based data consumption
- Architectural Strategy and Judgment: Connects business priorities, enterprise architecture standards, and emerging technology into a practical target architecture that guides design and investment
- Influence and Partnership: Communicates clearly with engineering teams and senior stakeholders, frames build-versus-integrate trade-offs, builds alignment, and drives decisions without relying solely on formal authority
- Governance Mindset: Embeds data governance, access control, and data-contract standards into platform workflows, balancing the openness of governed data products with security, privacy, and compliance
- This position requires a senior, hands-on technical leader who can operate at the intersection of platform strategy, modern data engineering, and architectural governance — creating clarity from complexity, making sound build-versus-integrate trade-offs, and setting the technical standards that help Appnovation’s clients deliver faster, safer, and more reusable data capabilities
- Senior solutions or enterprise architect with demonstrated experience designing cross-cloud and multi-cloud data architectures
- Experience defining data-contract standards (e.g., the Linux Foundation / Open Data Contract Standard) and embedding governance metadata into platform workflows
- Prior experience in a consulting or client-facing delivery environment, working across multiple concurrent initiatives and priorities
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, with 10+ years of technology experience, including significant experience in solution, enterprise, or data architecture
- Deep expertise in data governance, including attribute- and role-based access control, data sensitivity and policy classification, and geolocation-based access requirements
- Strong background in identity and access management for both users and machine/agent identities (OAuth/OIDC, service accounts)
- Excellent communication, stakeholder-management, and documentation skills, with the ability to explain complex technical trade-offs to both technical and non-technical audiences
- Proven application of zero-copy, data-mesh, and data-product principles, including domain-driven design
- Foundations: Python; OAuth/OIDC and identity providers; infrastructure-as-code (Terraform)
- AI and agents: MCP, Snowflake Cortex and Genie, vector search and embeddings
- Governance and catalog: Collibra, Unity Catalog, Horizon; Neo4j and knowledge graphs
- Data platforms: Databricks, Snowflake; AWS-native data a plus
- Formats and contracts: Apache Iceberg and open table formats, YAML-based data contracts
- Brings hands-on credibility across cloud data platforms, governance, and agent-based access to guide engineers, challenge assumptions, evaluate emerging technologies, and make sound platform-scale technology choices
- You actively seek out things outside your comfort zone with the ability to rapidly learn and take advantage of new concepts, business models, and technologies
- You have solid analytical, problem-solving and decision-making skills
- Understands how agentic consumption, MCP-based access, and modern data-product thinking can responsibly expose governed data to enterprise AI while maintaining appropriate controls and verification
- You set high standards for architecture quality, governance, performance/scalability and security and seek continuous improvement
- You can influence technology choices with both engineers and senior leaders
- You are comfortable in a fast-paced, entrepreneurial and rapid-growth environment
- You can explain complex technical solutions engagingly to technical and non-technical audiences and connect technological solutions with measurable business value
- Prior experience and connections in the Life Sciences industry is preferred
- You engage and build positive internal and external client relationships, while managing multiple initiatives, often with competing priorities
- You have a customer-first mindset and a devotion to customer service
- You have strong self-initiative, passion, interpersonal, oral and written communication and collaboration skills with the ability to work, influence and make an impact in a cross-functional environment with all levels of the organization
- You are responsive and thrive in a fast-paced diverse high-performance environment with rapidly changing business needs
- You have prior experience in consulting and client negotiations
- You can take an evolving product vision and business requirements and transform them into concrete technical designs and specifications for software developers, data engineers, and other technology stakeholders
- Familiarity with semantic layers, ontologies, knowledge graphs, and retrieval-augmented generation or vector search for data discovery
- Awareness of cross-cloud cost management and FinOps practices
- Experience operating in a regulated life-sciences or comparable compliance-driven environment (GxP, GDPR/HIPAA, PII/PHI handling)
- Thank you for your interest in a career with Appnovation Technologies! Please note that only those selected for an interview will be contacted