Data Architect Senior or Data Architect Lead

Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland; Cleveland (OH); On-site; USD 111,400 - 153,100; Full time

Job summary

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is seeking a Senior Data Architect to lead the design and architecture of complex product development initiatives. The role involves modernizing data analytics assets, ensuring alignment with enterprise standards, and influencing technical decisions across the organization. Ideal candidates have a strong background in cloud-native architecture and data governance, with a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree and 5+ or 3+ years of experience respectively, along with excellent stakeholder engagement skills.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience for Bachelor's or 3+ years for Master's.
• Proven track record of designing and implementing complex systems.
• Experience in collaborative, cross-functional environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead design pattern/technology selection for product initiatives.
• Engage with stakeholders to identify gaps and recommend solutions.
• Communicate architecture decisions effectively across the organization.

Skills

Design patterns selection

Cloud-native architecture

Stakeholder influence

Data governance

Collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Master’s degree

Tools

AWS

CI/CD

Terraform

Job description

Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland’s mission is to foster the stability, integrity, and efficiency of the nation’s monetary, financial, and payment systems while representing the Fourth District perspectives.

As part of the nation’s central bank, we are a team of mission-driven professionals who are committed to serving with excellence. Our core values are: Build Trust Every Day, Own Our Actions, Collaborate with Intention, and Be Open to Change.

For twenty-six years in a row, we’ve been named “One of Northeast Ohio’s Best Places to Work” by North Coast 99. This prestigious award honors organizations with outstanding employment practices, including compensation, benefits, training, recruitment, retention, community services, and employee communications.

To be considered for this role, candidates must be a U.S. citizen.

As a Senior Data Architect, you will lead design pattern/technology selection and architecture decisions for complex product development initiatives, which will include modernization efforts for several important data analytics assets. These modernization projects will include the transition from legacy, on-premises architectures to a more modern, cloud-native design. You will serve as the technical authority who ensures solutions meet business objectives while maintaining alignment with enterprise architecture standards, security requirements, and scalability needs. This role requires both deep technical expertise and the ability to influence stakeholders across all levels of the organization.

Essential Responsibilities

• Accountable for selecting design patterns, technologies, and solution architectures for product development projects by analyzing business, technical, and enterprise requirements to ensure alignment with organizational objectives and industry best practices.


• Engages with business areas, clients, and stakeholders as a trusted consultant to identify gaps, present solution options, and recommend optimal technologies; documents architecture decisions and technical standards to support knowledge sharing.


• Champions complex, strategic enterprise solutions by communicating architecture decisions and technical concepts effectively across all organizational levels, from technical teams to senior management.


• Refines and supports a portfolio-wide data optimization strategy to further align existing assets to the new, cloud-native architecture.


• Collaborates with cross-functional teams throughout the full development lifecycle, including ideation, development, integration, testing, and production support.


• Researches and evaluates emerging technologies and industry trends; develops strategic recommendations for architecture investments that reduce cost, increase security, eliminate redundancies, and improve system flexibility.


• Builds and maintains strategic relationships with key technology vendors and business partners to stay current on industry developments and enterprise architecture landscape shifts.


• Owns the data infrastructure strategy and roadmap; assesses current state, identifies gaps, and drives architectural initiatives and monitoring solutions from planning through implementation.


• Establishes, enforces, and evolves data governance policies, quality frameworks, and compliance practices to ensure data integrity, security, accuracy, and regulatory adherence across critical systems.


• Collaborates with data stewards, compliance teams, and technical leads to translate governance and regulatory requirements into technical controls, validation rules, access policies, and audit mechanisms.


• Assists in establishing a flexible and valuable portfolio-level data catalog that will drive transparency and promote reusability.

Technical Expertise

• Enterprise & Solutions Architecture: Deep experience designing distributed systems, microservices, API architectures, and cloud-native applications.


• Financial Services Technology: Understanding of payment systems, regulatory requirements, and banking technology landscape.


• Modern Application Development: Expertise in web, mobile, and backend architectures with strong grasp of scalability, security, and performance patterns.


• Cloud & Infrastructure: Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS), containerization, CI/CD (e.g., GitLab), and infrastructure-as-code (e.g., CDK or Terraform).


• Data Architecture: Proficiency in data modeling, integration patterns, and database technologies (relational and NoSQL).


• Architecture Frameworks: Working knowledge of TOGAF, C4, AWS Well-Architected Framework or similar architecture analysis and documentation approaches.

Education And Experience

• Bachelor’s degree and 5 years of professional work experience or


• Master’s degree and 3 years of professional work experience


• Proven track record of designing and implementing complex, production-grade systems


• Experience working in collaborative, cross-functional environments

Salary: $111,400 to $153,100 annually. Final salary and offer will be determined by the applicant’s background, experience, skills, internal equity, and market data.

The Cleveland Fed offers benefits to support overall health and financial security. Learn more about our benefits here: https://www.clevelandfed.org/careers

Physical Demands and General Working Conditions

This is not necessarily an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, standards or requirements, efforts, skills or working conditions associated with the job. While this is intended to be an accurate reflection of the current job, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland reserves the right to revise this or any job description at any time.

Reasonable Accommodation Statement

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is committed to ensuring that individuals with disabilities are provided with reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, perform essential job functions, and receive other benefits and privileges of employment. To request a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please send an email to [e-mail].

Bank’s Ethics Rules and Drug Testing

As a condition of employment, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland employees must comply with the Bank’s ethics rules which generally prohibit employees, their spouses/domestic partners, and minor children from owning or controlling, directly or indirectly, any debt or equity interest in a depository institution or an affiliate of a depository institution. A "depository institution" means a bank, a trust company, or any institution that accepts deposits, including a bank chartered under the laws of a foreign country. In addition, employees (and their spouses/domestic partners, and minor children) may not own shares of mutual funds, unit investment trusts or ETFs that have a policy, as stated in the prospectus, of concentrating in the financial services industry and that have underlying investments in banks or other depository institutions. If you or your spouse/domestic partner or minor child own such securities and would not be willing or able to divest them if you accepted an offer of Bank employment, you should raise this issue with the recruiter for this posting.

In addition, as a condition of employment, candidates must undergo a background check and will be tested for all controlled substances prohibited by federal law, to include marijuana, prior to hire and for certain safety sensitive positions during employment.

The Federal Reserve Banks are committed to equal employment opportunity for employees and job applicants in compliance with applicable law and to an environment where employees are valued for their differences.