Senior Data Platform Architect - Databricks & Governance

SMX; Hanover (MD); On-site; USD 142,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Paid leave

Retirement plan

Job summary

SMX is seeking a Senior Data Architect to design and stand up a modern, governed enterprise data platform from the ground up. You will own the architecture turning fragmented data into standardized, reusable products, defining platform patterns, governance, and integration.

You will collaborate with data engineers, analysts, product managers, and stakeholders to translate requirements into architecture, communicate trade-offs, and guide delivery to meet security and compliance standards.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of progressive experience in data architecture, data engineering, or platform engineering.
• Security clearance required (Secret or higher).
• Deep, hands-on Databricks experience — platform architecture, Unity Catalog, medallion pipelines, and workspace/access design.
• Strong proficiency in SQL and Python; cloud data architecture with AWS/Azure/GCP.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end architecture of a Databricks-based enterprise data platform — environment design, medallion (bronze/silver/gold) architecture, storage layers, and data flow across cloud and integrated systems.
• Lead zero-to-one platform builds, translating an ambiguous target state into a concrete, phased technical architecture and delivery plan.
• Design data-product and domain-driven architecture, defining canonical/domain data models, golden-record and Master Data Management (MDM) patterns, and reusable data-product standards.
• Establish governance-as-code practices — access controls, data classification, lineage, metadata, and data-quality rules implemented as enforceable pipeline and platform logic rather than manual process.
• Architect platform integrations and data exchange between systems — APIs, storage-layer delivery, event-driven patterns, and secure connectivity across internal and external consumers.
• Define data standardization and quality frameworks that bring raw source data to trusted, consumable tiers.

Skills

Databricks platform architecture

SQL

Python

Cloud data architecture

Data modeling & MDm & golden-record

Governance-as-code

Leadership / architecture ownership

Communication to exec stakeholders

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science / Data Engineering / Information Systems

Tools

Databricks

Unity Catalog

Medallion architecture

APIs design

Job description

SMX is seeking a Senior Data Architect to design and stand up a modern, governed enterprise data platform from the ground up. You will own the architecture turning fragmented data into standardized, reusable products, defining platform patterns, governance, and integration.

You will collaborate with data engineers, analysts, product managers, and stakeholders to translate requirements into architecture, communicate trade-offs, and guide delivery to meet security and compliance standards.