Principal Data Platform Architect: GCP Modernization & AI

Babel Street; Reston (VA); On-site; USD 220,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

401(k) plan

Unlimited leave

Federal holidays

Tuition reimbursement

Job summary

Babel Street is seeking a Principal Data Architect to redesign and modernize its data platform and pipelines. You will architect the target state, write critical code, and guide engineers through a multi‑year migration to Google Cloud.

We handle data from hundreds of sources and dozens of languages, building a unified platform for AI workloads. You will report to the SVP of Engineering and collaborate with AI, Graph, and Product teams.

Qualifications

• 12+ years building data systems, with at least 5 as the lead architect or principal engineer on a large‑scale data platform.
• Proficient in Python and SQL; fluent in Java/Scala/Go.
• Led a major re‑architecture or cloud migration of a data platform with a clear design and sequencing.
• Deep hands‑on experience with distributed processing and streaming (e.g., Spark, Beam/Dataflow, Flink, Kafka).
• Production experience with GCP data services (BigQuery, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, GCS, Spanner) and AWS.
• Expert‑level operation of Elasticsearch/OpenSearch at scale with cost tuning.
• Experience with lakehouse formats (Iceberg, Delta, Hudi) and orchestration (Airflow/Composer/Dagster).
• Track record of cutting platform cost without hurting performance.
• Clear written communication; ability to write a design doc understandable by leadership and engineers.
• Ability to obtain a US security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Map the current data estate end to end in the first 90 days and publish a target architecture and migration plan.
• Design and build the new ingestion and processing backbone for millions of documents per day with clear SLOs.
• Lead the data platform workstream of the GCP migration and define what moves, is rebuilt, or retired.
• Rationalize storage and search, defining use of BigQuery, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, and object stores.
• Build data services for AI, with hybrid retrieval across multiple data types.
• Create governance and compliance platforms with privacy‑driven parameters and retention rules.
• Ensure platform operability with data contracts, quality checks, observability, and cost attribution.
• Mentor engineers and coordinate with offshore teams; act as escalation point for data incidents.

Skills

Python

Java/Scala/Go

SQL

Distributed processing

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related field

Tools

Elasticsearch/OpenSearch

BigQuery

Dataflow/Beam

Airflow/Composer/Dagster

Job description

Babel Street is seeking a Principal Data Architect to redesign and modernize its data platform and pipelines. You will architect the target state, write critical code, and guide engineers through a multi‑year migration to Google Cloud.

We handle data from hundreds of sources and dozens of languages, building a unified platform for AI workloads. You will report to the SVP of Engineering and collaborate with AI, Graph, and Product teams.