Principal Data Architect, Cloud Data Platform Modernization

hatch I.T.; Reston (VA); On-site; USD 220,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

401(k) retirement plans

Unlimited flexible leave

Holidays

Tuition reimbursement

Job summary

Babel Street is seeking a Principal Data Architect to redesign its data infrastructure and pipelines, and to lead a multi‑year migration of a petabyte‑scale platform onto Google Cloud. This hands‑on role focuses on architecture, code, and technical leadership rather than people management.

You will own ingestion, storage, search, governance, and AI enablement, while shaping data contracts, quality checks, and cost attribution. A deep cloud data stack and OSINT/domain experience are highly valued.

Qualifications

• 12+ years building data systems with 5+ as lead architect on large-scale platforms.
• Hands-on coding: Python; fluent in SQL; proficient in Java/Scala/Go.
• Led major re-architecture or cloud migration of a data platform.
• Deep experience with distributed processing and streaming systems.
• Proven experience with GCP data services and AWS migration.

Responsibilities

• Map current data estate in 90 days and publish target architecture with migration plan.
• Design and build new ingestion and processing backbone for scalable pipelines.
• Lead data platform workstream of GCP migration and modernization.
• Rationalize storage, search, and compute toward a unified platform.
• Build data foundation for AI with hybrid retrieval and provenance.
• Create governance, compliance, and cost-aware platform controls.
• Ensure operability with data contracts, quality checks, and observability.

Skills

Python

SQL

Java/Scala/Go

Distributed processing

Design docs

Tools

BigQuery

Dataflow

Pub/Sub

GCS

Spanner

Elasticsearch/OpenSearch

Airflow/Composer/Dagster

Spark/Beam/Flink

Kafka/Pub/Sub

Job description

Babel Street is seeking a Principal Data Architect to redesign its data infrastructure and pipelines, and to lead a multi‑year migration of a petabyte‑scale platform onto Google Cloud. This hands‑on role focuses on architecture, code, and technical leadership rather than people management.

You will own ingestion, storage, search, governance, and AI enablement, while shaping data contracts, quality checks, and cost attribution. A deep cloud data stack and OSINT/domain experience are highly valued.