Remote Principal Data Architect – Azure & Databricks

Blueflag-LLP; Pittsburgh (Allegheny County); Remote; USD 170,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous annual leave and holidays

Comprehensive health and dental plans

401(k) with company match

Life insurance and AD&D coverage

Ongoing training and professional dev.

Job summary

BlueFlag is seeking a Principal Data Architect to lead data architecture for a premier AI platform for Veterans' health and benefits. This remote role is customer-facing daily, guiding VA leaders and senior engineers on Azure-based data solutions.

You'll drive architecture decisions, mentor engineers, and shape the platform's future with Databricks and Unity Catalog, ensuring HIPAA/FISMA compliance and scalable data pipelines.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS/IS or related field.
• US Citizenship and ability to obtain public trust clearance; eligible to work in the US.
• 12+ years in data engineering and data architecture; leadership experience.
• Hands-on cloud data engineering on Azure: ADF, Synapse, Databricks, Delta Lake.
• Experience with Unity Catalog, data privacy (PHI/PII) and governance.
• Strong SQL and Python (PySpark) skills; customer-facing architecture leadership.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture discussions with customers and VA stakeholders; translate needs into designs.
• Mentor senior data engineers through design reviews and hands-on problem solving.
• Set standards for ingestion, storage, modeling, and serving on Azure stack.
• Architect move to Azure Commercial with Databricks and Unity Catalog governance.
• Design metadata-driven frameworks for batch, CDC, and streaming patterns.
• Support reporting and ML workloads via Synapse, Databricks SQL, and Power BI.
• Ensure PHI/PII protection with access controls and regulatory requirements.
• Prepare architecture and technical sections for proposals.

Skills

Data architecture leadership

Azure data platform

PySpark

SQL

CDC/Streaming

Unity Catalog

IaC (Terraform)

HIPAA/NIST/FISMA

Customer-facing

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/IS or related

Tools

Azure Data Factory

Synapse Analytics

Databricks

Delta Lake

ADLS Gen2

Power BI

Job description

BlueFlag is seeking a Principal Data Architect to lead data architecture for a premier AI platform for Veterans' health and benefits. This remote role is customer-facing daily, guiding VA leaders and senior engineers on Azure-based data solutions.

You'll drive architecture decisions, mentor engineers, and shape the platform's future with Databricks and Unity Catalog, ensuring HIPAA/FISMA compliance and scalable data pipelines.