Senior Snowflake / Data Platform Architect

KData Inc.; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

KData Inc. is seeking a Senior Snowflake / Data Platform Architect to design, build, and optimize a modern data platform on Snowflake and AWS.

You will drive architecture decisions, performance tuning, FinOps, security, governance, and automation to empower secure data delivery across the enterprise. You will establish CI/CD and GitOps practices, implement IaC with Terraform, and manage data pipelines with Airflow, NiFi, Kafka, and dbt, enabling seamless access for analytics tools such as Power

Qualifications

• 8+ years of progressive experience in Data Engineering/Architecture with lead/senior responsibilities.
• Deep hands-on Snowflake expertise including virtual warehouses, secure data sharing and RBAC.
• Strong AWS knowledge focusing on S3, IAM, compute and networking/security fundamentals.
• Experience with Terraform, GitHub, CI/CD and GitOps practices.

Responsibilities

• Design, architect, and optimize enterprise-grade data platform solutions using Snowflake and AWS.
• Establish standards, patterns, and best practices for modern data modeling, scalability and reliability.
• Monitor, tune Snowflake compute and query performance; implement FinOps for cloud costs.

Skills

Data Platform Architecture

Cloud Data Engineering

FinOps

Governance & RBAC

DevOps & IaC

Data Modeling

Streaming Data

BI Integration

Tools

Snowflake

AWS

Terraform

GitHub

CI/CD

GitOps

dbt

Apache Airflow

Apache NiFi

Apache Kafka

Power BI

S3

Job description

Senior Snowflake / Data Platform Architect

We are looking for a Senior Snowflake / Data Platform Architect with deep hands-on expertise in Snowflake and AWS to lead the design, build, and optimization of our modern data platform.

In this role, you will combine strong architectural capabilities with practical, hands-on experience in platform performance tuning, cost optimization (FinOps), robust security and governance, and infrastructure automation. You will play a pivotal role in driving our data architecture strategy, establishing CI/CD and GitOps practices, and enabling secure, scalable data integration and delivery across the enterprise.

Key Responsibilities

• Architecture & Strategy:
• Design, architect, and optimize enterprise-grade modern data platform solutions leveraging Snowflake and AWS.
• Establish architectural standards, patterns, and best practices for modern data modeling, platform scalability, and reliability.
• Performance & FinOps (Cost Optimization):
• Proactively monitor, optimize, and fine-tune Snowflake compute/warehouse configurations and query performance.
• Implement FinOps frameworks to monitor, manage, and optimize cloud consumption costs across Snowflake and AWS infrastructure.
• Security, Governance & Observability:
• Define and enforce data governance strategies, including Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), data masking, dynamic column-level security, and secure Data Sharing.
• Implement comprehensive platform observability and logging to monitor data quality, pipeline health, and platform performance.
• Platform Automation & DevOps/GitOps:
• Drive platform infrastructure-as-code (IaC) using Terraform.
• Establish modern CI/CD pipelines and GitOps workflows for data modeling and infrastructure deployments via GitHub.
• Oversee and optimize batch and real-time streaming data pipelines utilizing Apache Airflow, Apache NiFi, Kafka, and dbt.
• Enable seamless data access and integration for analytics tools such as Power BI.

Requirements

Key Requirements & Qualifications

• Experience: 8+ years of progressive experience in Data Engineering / Architecture, with a focus as a Lead or Senior Architect designing end-to-end cloud data platforms.
• Snowflake Expertise: Advanced, hands-on mastery of Snowflake architecture (Virtual Warehouses, Secure Data Sharing, Dynamic Data Masking, RBAC, Snowpipe, Time Travel, Micro-partitioning optimization).
• Cloud Infrastructure (AWS): Strong expertise in the AWS ecosystem, specifically S3 storage, IAM, compute, and cloud networking/security fundamentals.
• Infrastructure as Code & DevOps: Hands-on experience with Terraform, GitHub, CI/CD automation, and GitOps methodologies.
• Data Transformation & Orchestration: Proficient with dbt for transformation and modeling, alongside orchestration tools like Apache Airflow and Apache NiFi.
• Streaming & Data Integration: Familiarity with real-time streaming tools like Apache Kafka.
• Analytics & Visualization: Knowledge of BI tool integration, particularly Power BI.
• Governance & FinOps Mindset: Proven track record in cost governance/FinOps management for cloud resources, robust RBAC enforcement, and enterprise data observability.

Key Technologies

• Cloud & Data Warehouse: Snowflake, AWS (S3)
• Infrastructure & Automation: Terraform, GitHub, CI/CD, GitOps
• Security & Governance: RBAC, Data Sharing, Dynamic Data Masking, FinOps, Observability