Senior Architect - Data Platforms & Architecture

3Cloud; Naperville (IL); Remote; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

3Cloud seeks a Senior Architect to lead Azure modernization initiatives, shaping scalable data and analytics architectures for complex programs. You will mentor engineers, drive secure and cost-aware designs, and partner with executives to set strategic roadmaps.

You will guide cross-team delivery, ensure alignment with business goals, and promote AI-enabled development while coordinating remote teams across the United States.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience delivering solutions in a primary technical domain.
• 5+ years of experience in solution architecture and leading development or engineering teams.
• 8+ years of experience in data engineering, including 4+ years architecting data solutions on Azure.
• Deep expertise in Microsoft Azure with experience with Databricks and/or Fabric.
• Proficiency in Python, PySpark, SQL, and data engineering frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture and technical strategy for Azure modernization and transformation programs across multiple teams.
• Translate client goals into scalable designs aligning with business priorities and requirements.
• Drive architecture across teams to follow shared models, standards, and patterns.
• Provide architectural oversight and guidance during implementation, including reviews of key designs and code.
• Apply engineering best practices for modular design, testability, and observability.

Skills

Solution architecture

Data engineering

Azure expertise

Python & PySpark

Azure DevOps

Tools

Databricks

Fabric

Azure DevOps

Job description

Remote - US

Are you looking for a role that motivates and challenges you? Are you ready for an opportunity for growth? Do you want to work on teams where people roll up their sleeves to take on tough problems together, and regularly blow the doors off our clients with their outstanding teamwork? If you answered yes to those questions, 3Cloud might just be for you!

At 3Cloud, we hire people who aren't afraid to experiment or fail. We hire people who are willing to give direct and candid feedback to their managers, leaders, and team members. We hire people who jump at those opportunities because they care about our collective growth and success. We hire people who challenge and hold each other accountable for living 3Cloud's core values because they know that it will result in amazing experiences and solutions for our clients and each other.

Responsibilities:

Solution Architecture and Technical Leadership

• Lead architecture and technical strategy for Azure modernization and transformation programs that span multiple teams and workstreams.
• Translate client goals into scalable designs that align with business priorities, non-functional requirements, delivery constraints, and program-level outcomes.
• Drive architecture across teams so designs follow shared models, standards, and patterns.
• Collaborate with architects and engineers in other domains to integrate solutions and maintain a cohesive end-to-end architecture.
• Provide ongoing architectural guidance during implementation, including reviews of key designs and code, and define patterns and guardrails that teams can reuse.
• Apply solid engineering practices in your primary domain—modular design, clear interfaces, testability, and observability—so solutions remain robust and maintainable.
• Use AI-assisted tooling to accelerate design, code, tests, documentation, and analysis, and help teams adopt effective practices at program scale.

Delivery and Consulting Excellence

• Lead or co-lead discovery and roadmap work for programs or large workstreams, turning inputs into integrated, testable backlogs with clear non-functional requirements and dependencies.
• Use structured problem solving to clarify scope, dependencies, and risks at program scale, and explain options in terms of value, cost, risk, and time-to-impact.
• Communicate architecture strategy and decisions clearly to technical and non-technical audiences, including executives.
• Build trusted relationships with product, engineering, and technology leaders, and help shape modernization roadmaps in the client's best interest.
• Provide architecture oversight so designs, interfaces, and integration points support predictable delivery and stable team velocity.
• Align multiple teams on shared outcomes, contracts, and integration points, ensuring dependencies are identified, owned, and tracked through to delivery.
• Help define delivery approaches, working agreements, and documentation practices that keep 3Cloud and client teams aligned across locations and time zones.
• Support effective use of Agile at scale by ensuring architecture and backlog structure enable incremental delivery, clear definitions of done, and data-informed adjustments based on telemetry and feedback.
• Apply a consulting mindset by anticipating client needs, proposing options, and tying solutions to clear results and adoption, and handle challenge and pushback by explaining trade-offs in simple, direct language.

Mentorship and Team Development:

• Mentor architects, senior engineers, and technical leads, building their design skills, architectural judgment, and ability to work effectively across systems and teams.
• Provide architectural oversight across teams or workstreams, modeling pragmatic decision-making and showing when to keep solutions simple and when new patterns or technologies are justified.
• Support hiring and growth by participating in technical interviews, calibration discussions, and mentorship, and by helping shape development plans for future architects.

Growth and Innovation:

• Contribute to business development by identifying opportunities beyond the current assignment across all our capabilities and assisting the sales director in pursuing them.
• Intentionally builds relationship networks within client accounts to deepen partnership and identify opportunities to provide additional business value.
• Partner with sales and account leaders on strategic pursuits by setting the technical vision, contributing to solution strategy, and participating in client workshops, demos, and roadmap sessions.
• Create solution options, high-level designs, and estimates for programs, clearly documenting assumptions, dependencies, and risks and tying them back to business value and risk reduction.
• Build and evolve reusable assets such as reference architectures, runbooks, workshops, starter repositories, and templates that become standard paths for delivery teams.
• Champion adoption of modern frameworks, patterns, platform capabilities, automation, and AIassisted tools that improve quality, speed, or reliability in a safe and secure way.
• Actively participate in enablement initiatives, share lessons from complex engagements, and help build a culture of collaboration, continuous improvement, and knowledge sharing.

Requirements:

• 10+ years of experience delivering solutions in a primary technical domain.
• 5+ years of experience in solution architecture and leading development or engineering teams, including multi-team or multi-workstream efforts.
• 8+ years of experience in data engineering, including 4+ years of experience architecting data solutions on Azure.
• Deep expertise in Microsoft Azure with experience with Databricks and/or Fabric.
• Proven ability to design and implement modern data architectures (data lakes, data warehouses, lakehouses, data mesh, streaming pipelines).
• Proficiency in Python, PySpark, SQL, and data engineering frameworks.
• Azure DevOps (including building Stories and tasks, and using pipelines and ARM templates for publishing code).
• Knowledge of infrastructure as code, APIs, security, compliance, and master data management.
• Experience optimizing data pipelines, queries, and architectures for performance and cost.
• Proven experience leading architecture and delivery for Azure-based solutions such as modernizations, transformations, or platform build-outs.
• Ability to define solution architectures that connect business goals to scalable technical designs and solid delivery practices.
• Experience leading hybrid and remote teams and maintaining alignment, quality, and predictable delivery across time zones.
• Deep knowledge of core concepts, languages, frameworks, and design patterns in your primary domain, with the ability to apply them at program scale.
• Experience using AI-augmented development and integrating AI or machine learning capabilities into solutions using APIs, frameworks, or cloud-based AI services.
• Experience with Agile or Scrum at scale, including backlog management, work slicing, and dependency handling.
• Experience in consulting or professional services.
• Familiarity with key Azure services relevant to your domain, such as messaging, compute, data, security, networking, and integration.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with clear written and verbal communication.
• Demonstrated interest in learning new cloud technologies and turning that learning into practical improvements for teams.
• Ability to stay hands-on with architecture and, when needed, implementation while guiding complex cloud solutions across teams.

Don't meet every single requirement? At 3Cloud we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace, so if you're excited about this role but your past experience doesn't align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway.

At this time, we cannot sponsor applicants for work visas.