Managing Consultant, Data Architect

HITEC; Burlingame (CA); Remote; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

IBM Consulting is seeking a Managing Consultant, Data Architect to lead enterprise data and AI platform architecture across client engagements. You will shape target-state architectures using Snowflake, Databricks, and cloud-native services on AWS, Azure, and GCP, guiding data modeling, integration, governance, and standards.

You will drive architecture reviews, mentor delivery teams, and help set platform direction with AI readiness and data-maturity assessments, delivering high-impact, trusted

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent.
• 10+ years in data engineering/warehousing or solution architecture.
• Experience owning end-to-end architecture on enterprise data platform engagements.
• Client-facing consulting or professional services delivery experience.
• 5+ years with modern cloud data platforms (Snowflake or Databricks).
• Proficiency in SQL and Python; experience with ELT/ orchestration tools.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end target-state architecture for data and AI platforms across engagements.
• Lead architecture assessments, AI readiness, and data maturity evaluations.
• Design data models and integration patterns; justify patterns and record decisions.
• Author and maintain reference architectures and engineering standards.
• Run architecture reviews; approve or redirect designs; govern multiple engagements.

Skills

Snowflake

Databricks

Cloud architecture

Data modeling

SQL

Python

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's Degree

Master's Degree

Tools

dbt

Airflow

Informatica

Terraform

Job description

Additional States: Missouri, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, South Dakota, Minnesota, Tennessee, Illinois, Ohio, Texas, Hawaii, Montana, Iowa, New York, North Carolina, Idaho, Virginia, North Dakota, Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Michigan, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Indiana, Arizona, Kentucky, Washington, Mississippi, Massachusetts, Maryland, Delaware, Kansas, Louisiana, Vermont, Nebraska, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada, California, West Virginia, Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire, Wyoming

A career in IBM Consulting is built on long-term client relationships and close collaboration worldwide. You'll work with leading companies across industries, helping them shape their hybrid cloud and AI journeys. With support from our strategic partners, robust IBM technology, and Red Hat, you'll have the tools to drive meaningful change and accelerate client impact. At IBM Consulting, curiosity fuels success. You'll be encouraged to challenge the norm, explore new ideas, and create innovative solutions that deliver real results. Our culture of growth and empathy focuses on your long-term career development while valuing your unique skills and experiences.

Hakkoda, an IBM company, is a modern data and AI consultancy. Our mission is to push the boundaries of data and AI, to be the partner clients trust for their most complex data challenges, and to create the kind of company that people want to be a part of. We bring deep expertise to Snowflake and the broader modern data stack, we are easy to work with, and we turn repeat problems into reusable solutions. Our team is distributed across North America, Latin America, and Europe, and we hire curious people who want to learn, experiment, and lead.

In this role, you'll work in one of our IBM Consulting Client Innovation Centers (Delivery Centers), where we deliver deep technical and industry expertise to a wide range of public and private sector clients around the world. Our delivery centers offer our clients locally based skills and technical expertise to drive innovation and adoption of new technology.

Your role and responsibilities

We are looking for a Managing Consultant, Data Architect to join our growing team of experts. This position is the principal technical authority for enterprise data and AI platforms across a portfolio of client engagements, with Snowflake and Databricks and cloud-native services on AWS, Azure, and GCP alongside it. The work spans target-state architecture and roadmaps, data modeling and integration patterns, security and governance architecture, and the reference architectures and standards that keep delivery consistent across engagements.

The ideal candidate leads architecture through delivery rather than handing off a design. They define the target state, decompose it into workstreams, make and document the trade-offs, and review what engagement teams build against it. They have been the lead architect on multiple enterprise platform implementations, lead discovery and executive advisory with client leadership, and bring a business-first lens to every design decision. They incorporate AI tooling into how they design and deliver, advise clients on AI readiness and where AI fits in their data strategy, and architect platforms that support AI workloads while keeping foundational data quality, structure, and governance intact.

This role carries principal-level ownership and a very high bar for delivery. The Managing Consultant, Data Architect is accountable for the technical outcome across every engagement they govern: the architecture is sound, the standards are followed, what ships to the client meets the design, and client executive sponsors trust them to make and defend the hard technical calls. They set technical direction for engagement architects and lead engineers, run architecture reviews, author the practice's reference architectures, lead solutioning and pre-sales for new work, and grow the practice's architecture bench through mentorship. They lead through technical authority rather than line management and thrive in a consulting environment where no two engagements are the same.

This role can be performed from anywhere in the US.

Responsibilities:

• Target-State Architecture: Own end-to-end target-state architecture for enterprise data and AI platforms across concurrent engagements, including platform topology, environment strategy, security and governance model, and cost and performance architecture at advanced-certification depth.
• Roadmaps and Executive Advisory: Lead architecture assessments and AI readiness and data maturity evaluations; translate findings into phased roadmaps with success metrics, investment cases, and cost guardrails; present and defend them to client executives.
• Data Modeling and Integration Patterns: Design layered data models (medallion, dimensional, Data Vault, 3NF) and semantic layers; select and justify integration patterns (batch, CDC, event-driven, API, data sharing) and record the trade-offs as architecture decision records.
• Reference Architectures and Standards: Author and maintain the practice's reference architectures, decision records, and reusable patterns for ingestion, transformation, orchestration, observability, governance, and AI-ready data; define engineering standards for transformation frameworks, CI/CD, and infrastructure as code.
• Architecture Governance: Run architecture reviews for engagement architects and lead engineers; approve or redirect designs before build; resolve cross-engagement design questions.
• Platform Direction: Set adoption direction for platform-native and AI capabilities (for example Snowflake Cortex, Snowpark, Iceberg and open table formats, Databricks Unity Catalog and Mosaic AI) and define where each platform fits in a client's estate, including coexistence and migration architectures.
• Delivery Accountability: Hold the technical outcome through delivery: decompose the architecture into workstreams, review what ships against the approved design, surface architectural risk, scope drift, and technical debt early with proposed resolutions, and partner with project and practice leadership on delivery health.
• Solutioning and Pre-Sales: Own architecture, effort estimates, staffing shapes, and technical narrative for proposals and statements of work; lead technical discovery and solution design in pursuit cycles alongside sales and practice leadership.
• Technical Leadership and Mentorship: Set technical direction for engagement teams; mentor architects, data engineers, and analytics engineers; support hiring, onboarding, and technical enablement for the practice.
• Practice and Partner Contribution: Contribute accelerators, estimation models, and enablement content; represent the practice with platform partners and in technical communities.
• AI-Assisted Delivery: Use AI tooling in design and delivery work and set standards for its use across engagement teams.

This job can be performed from anywhere in the US.

Required education

Bachelor's Degree

Preferred education

Master's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or an equivalent field.
• 10+ years in data engineering, data warehousing, or solution architecture, including 4+ years owning end-to-end architecture on enterprise data platform engagements and serving as lead architect on at least three implementations.
• Client-facing consulting or professional services delivery experience, including executive stakeholder engagement and advisory across concurrent engagements.
• 5+ years hands‑on at advanced depth on at least one modern cloud data platform: Snowflake (account and warehouse topology, clustering and performance, RBAC and security model, cost governance, Streams, Tasks, Dynamic Tables, Snowpark, data sharing, Iceberg, Cortex) or Databricks (Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Spark, Workflows, Delta Live Tables, Mosaic AI), with working knowledge of the other sufficient to design coexistence or migration architectures.
• Deep expertise in enterprise data modeling (dimensional, Data Vault, 3NF) and target‑state platform design across ingestion, transformation, semantic, and consumption layers, including data mesh and data product patterns.
• Proven track record designing batch and streaming ingestion frameworks and choosing among integration patterns (CDC, event-driven, file‑based, API) based on client constraints.
• Strong proficiency in SQL and Python; hands‑on with ELT and orchestration tooling such as dbt, Matillion, Informatica, Airflow, or platform‑native pipelines, sufficient to review, prototype, and unblock delivery work.
• CI/CD and infrastructure as code for data platforms (GitLab, GitHub Actions, or Azure DevOps; Terraform): pipelines, environment promotion, and automated testing.
• Cloud platform experience on AWS, Azure, or GCP, including networking, IAM, storage, private connectivity, and cost considerations for data platforms.
• Experience architecting platforms that support AI and ML workloads, including feature and vector data, RAG patterns, and LLM integration within data pipelines.
• Ability to assess client AI readiness and data maturity and translate findings into a phased architecture roadmap.
• Experience defining and enforcing architectural standards, reference architectures, and reusable patterns across multiple delivery teams.
• Demonstrated technical leadership: setting technical direction, conducting architecture, design, and code reviews, and mentoring architects and engineers.
• Track record of owning technical delivery across complex, multi‑workstream engagements, including estimation and risk management.
• Track record contributing architecture, estimates, and technical narrative to proposals and statements of work.
• Strong client‑facing communication skills, including presenting and defending architecture decisions to executive and technical stakeholders.
• Practical use of AI‑assisted development tooling to improve design and delivery throughput.
• Comfortable working in Agile delivery environments.

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Platform Certifications: SnowPro Advanced: Architect; Databricks Certified Data Engineer Professional or Solutions Architect credential. Holding both is a strong plus.
• Cloud Architecture Certification: AWS Solutions Architect Professional, Azure Solutions Architect Expert, or GCP Professional Data Engineer.
• Platform Migration Leadership: Leading migrations from legacy warehouses (Teradata, Oracle, SQL Server, Hadoop) to modern cloud platforms, including assessment, wave planning, and validation.
• Data Governance and Security Architecture: Designing governance frameworks, data quality controls, lineage, and cataloging across enterprise platforms (Alation, Atlan, Collibra, or equivalent).
• Streaming and Event-Driven Architecture: Kafka, Kinesis, EventBridge, or Event Hubs for operational and analytic data movement.
• Applied AI in Production: MLOps practices, model serving, agentic data workflows, and operating AI workloads on data platforms in production environments.
• FinOps for Data Platforms: Cost governance models, chargeback, and optimization programs across platform and cloud spend.
• Industry Context: Regulated industry experience (financial services, insurance, healthcare and life sciences, energy, public sector).
• Thought Leadership: Contributions to technical communities through speaking, writing, open source, or internal enablement.

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM Consulting is IBM’s consulting and global professional services business, with market leading capabilities in business and technology transformation. With deep expertise in many industries, we offer strategy, experience, technology, and operations services to many of the most innovative and valuable companies in the world. Our people are focused on accelerating our clients’ businesses through the power of collaboration. We believe in the power of technology responsibly used to help people, partners and the planet.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on‑going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can‑do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM’s greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we’re also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it’s time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal‑opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to:

• Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being
• Financial programs such as 401(k), cash balance pension plan, the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs
• Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law
• Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals
• Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.

The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full‑time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job‑related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro‑rated for those who start working during the calendar year.