Lead Data Platform Architect

CliftonLarsonAllen; Milwaukee (WI); On-site; USD 130,000 - 185,000; Full time

Job summary

CliftonLarsonAllen (CLA) is seeking a Senior Data Platform Architect to lead platform architecture and engineering practices across cloud, data platforms, and developer experience. You will guide strategy, define standards, and collaborate with Cloud Architecture, DevOps, and engineering leaders to enable secure, scalable software delivery.

You’ll manage a small team of platform architects, own governance, SRE practices, and CI/CD patterns, and ensure platforms meet reliability, security, and

Qualifications

• 6 years of relevant experience required.
• Experience in platform engineering, cloud architecture, SRE, or infrastructure engineering preferred.
• Supervisory experience preferred.
• Bachelor's degree in Information Management, Computer Science, or related field preferred.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve platform reference architectures and deployment patterns.
• Establish target-state platform roadmaps aligned to strategy and security.
• Partner with Cloud Architecture leaders to align capabilities with objectives.
• Evaluate technology options balancing cost, risk, scalability and maintainability.
• Lead architecture reviews and provide technical leadership across teams.
• Define enterprise CI/CD architecture standards and deployment patterns.
• Collaborate with DevOps to improve build, release and environment management.
• Ensure platform solutions meet availability, performance, security and compliance.
• Drive adoption of platform capabilities via reference implementations and patterns.
• Translate technical topics into clear decisions for stakeholders.

Skills

Platform architecture

Cloud architecture

SRE

Leadership

DevOps

IaC

Education

Bachelor's degree in Information Management, Computer Science, or related field

Tools

Azure/AWS/GCP

CI/CD tooling

IaC tools

Container platforms

Job description

CLA is a top 10 national professional services firm where our purpose is to create opportunities every day, for our clients, our people, and our communities through industry-focused wealth advisory, digital, audit, tax, consulting, and outsourcing services. Even with more than 8,500 people, 130 U.S. locations, and a global reach, we promise to know you and help you.

CLA is dedicated to building a culture that invites different beliefs and perspectives to the table, so we can truly know and help our clients, communities, and each other.

CLA is growing and seeking to hire an experienced Senior Data Platform Architect to join our talented Information Technology team. The position offers growth, flexibility and a collaborative work environment.

This role is responsible for guiding platform architecture and engineering practices across one or more platform domains (e.g., cloud foundation, container platforms, integration, data platforms, developer experience). This role leads a small team of platform architects, sets technical direction, establishes enterprise platform standards, and partners with Cloud Architecture, DevOps, and engineering leaders to define platform strategies, automation frameworks, and CI/CD deployment patterns that enable secure, scalable, and reliable software delivery across the organization.

How you’ll create opportunities in this Senior Data Platform Architect role:

Platform Architecture & Strategy

• Define and evolve platform reference architectures, standards, guardrails, and deployment patterns that enable engineering teams to deliver software safely, consistently, and efficiently.
• Establish target-state platform roadmaps aligned to business strategy, cloud strategy, security requirements, and technical debt reduction.
• Partner with Cloud Architecture leaders to align platform capabilities, cloud services, and infrastructure standards with enterprise architecture objectives.
• Evaluate technology options and make architecture recommendations balancing cost, risk, scalability, maintainability, and operational effectiveness.

Engineering Leadership & Delivery

• Lead architecture and design reviews for complex platform initiatives and provide technical leadership across multiple engineering teams.
• Define enterprise CI/CD architecture standards, deployment patterns, automation frameworks, and software delivery guardrails.
• Partner with DevOps leaders to establish and continuously improve build, release, deployment, and environment management practices across the technology organization.
• Ensure platform solutions meet non-functional requirements including availability, performance, resilience, security, compliance, and operability.
• Drive adoption of platform capabilities through reference implementations, reusable patterns, technical guidance, and governance.

Leadership

• Provide day-to-day leadership through coaching, mentoring, development, and performance management.
• Support hiring, onboarding, workforce planning, and technical skill development.

Governance, Risk & Reliability

• Promote secure-by-design and compliance-by-default architectural patterns.
• Establish governance processes that ensure platform solutions adhere to architectural standards, operational requirements, and risk management practices.
• Own or co‑own platform reliability practices, including SLOs, SLIs, incident reviews, root‑cause analysis, and continuous reliability improvements.
• Define platform lifecycle management, including versioning, deprecation strategies, change management, and adoption planning.

Stakeholder Partnership & Communication

• Translate complex technical topics into clear decisions and tradeoffs for technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Partner with Cloud Architecture, DevOps, Security, Infrastructure, Network, Data, and Application teams to ensure end-to-end solution integrity and alignment.
• Create and maintain architecture artifacts including reference architectures, diagrams, ADRs, deployment standards, and decision logs.

Experience

6 years relevant experience required.

• Experience in platform engineering, cloud architecture, SRE, or infrastructure engineering preferred.
• Supervisory experience preferred.

Education

Bachelor's degree is required. Combination of relevant experience, education, and training may be accepted in lieu of degree.

• Degree in Information Management, Computer Science, or a related field preferred.

Technical Competencies

• Expert knowledge of enterprise platform architecture, platform engineering principles, and large‑scale technology ecosystems.
• Advanced knowledge of cloud architecture and cloud‑native technologies across Azure, AWS, and/or Google Cloud Platform environments.
• Expertise establishing platform standards, governance frameworks, reference architectures, and technology roadmaps.
• Experience defining enterprise CI/CD strategies, deployment patterns, release automation frameworks, and DevOps operating models.
• Advanced understanding of Infrastructure as Code (IaC), platform automation, and environment provisioning technologies.
• Deep knowledge of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), observability, monitoring, logging, performance engineering, and operational excellence practices.
• Advanced understanding of security architecture, identity and access management, secrets management, vulnerability management, and secure software delivery practices.
• Experience leading architecture reviews and governing technology decisions across multiple products, platforms, or teams.
• Expertise communicating architectural vision and technical strategy to executive, business, and technical stakeholders.

Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities

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Wellness at CLA

To support our CLA family members, we focus on their physical, financial, social, and emotional well‑being and offer comprehensive benefit options that include health, dental, vision, 401k and much more.

To view a complete list of benefits, click here.