Job Description: Snowflake Architect
Position Title
Snowflake Architect
Location
Flexible / Hybrid / Remote
Experience
12+ Years of Overall Experience with 5+ Years in Snowflake Architecture and Implementation
Role Summary
We are seeking an experienced Snowflake Architect to lead the design, architecture, and implementation of scalable cloud-based data platforms. The ideal candidate will possess extensive expertise in Snowflake, AWS/Azure cloud services, modern data warehousing, data lake architectures, and enterprise analytics ecosystems.
This role will be responsible for defining data strategies, designing end-to-end data solutions, optimizing platform performance, ensuring data governance, and driving cloud data modernization initiatives across the organization.
Key Responsibilities
Architecture & Solution Design
- Design and implement enterprise-scale Snowflake data platforms.
- Define and implement modern data architectures encompassing:
- Data Lakes
- Data Warehouses
- Data Marts
- Lakehouse architectures
- Develop scalable and secure data models supporting analytics, BI, AI, and ML use cases.
- Create architecture roadmaps aligned with business and technology strategies.
Cloud Data Engineering
- Architect Snowflake solutions on AWS and/or Azure.
- Design cloud-native data ingestion, transformation, and orchestration frameworks.
- Implement ELT/ETL pipelines using modern cloud technologies.
- Optimize data movement across on-premise and cloud environments.
Data Platform Modernization
- Lead migration of legacy data warehouses (Teradata, Oracle, SQL Server, Netezza, Redshift, Synapse, etc.) to Snowflake.
- Define best practices for cloud adoption, scalability, and cost optimization.
- Drive enterprise data modernization programs.
Performance & Optimization
- Optimize Snowflake compute and storage utilization.
- Implement clustering, partitioning, caching, workload management, and query performance tuning.
- Establish monitoring, capacity planning, and platform observability.
Security & Governance
- Design enterprise security models.
- Implement RBAC, data masking, row-level security, and compliance controls.
- Ensure adherence to data governance, privacy, and regulatory requirements.
- Support audit and risk management initiatives.
Stakeholder Leadership
- Collaborate with business, analytics, engineering, and executive stakeholders.
- Lead architecture reviews and governance discussions.
- Mentor data engineers, developers, and technical teams.
- Act as the Snowflake Center of Excellence (CoE) lead and subject matter expert.
Required Qualifications
Education
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field.
Experience
- 12+ years of overall data engineering and architecture experience.
- 5+ years of hands-on Snowflake architecture experience.
- Proven experience designing enterprise-scale cloud data solutions.
- Extensive experience with large-scale data warehouse and analytics platforms.
Technical Skills
Snowflake Expertise
- Snowflake Architecture
- Snowflake Data Cloud
- Snowpark
- Streams & Tasks
- Dynamic Tables
- Materialized Views
- Data Sharing
- Secure Data Sharing
- Cloning & Time Travel
- Data Marketplace
- Performance Optimization
- Cost Governance
Cloud Platforms
Strong expertise in at least one:
AWS
- S3
- Glue
- Lambda
- Athena
- Redshift
- ECS/EKS
- IAM
- CloudWatch
- Kinesis
Azure
- Azure Data Factory (ADF)
- Azure Databricks
- Azure Synapse
- ADLS Gen2
- Azure Functions
- Microsoft Fabric (Preferred)
- Azure Monitor
- Azure Key Vault
Data Engineering
- ETL/ELT Architecture
- Data Modeling
- Dimensional Modeling
- Kimball Methodology
- Data Vault
- Master Data Management (MDM)
- Metadata Management
- Data Quality Frameworks
Programming
- SQL (Expert)
- Python
- PySpark
- Shell Scripting
Preferred Certifications
Snowflake
- SnowPro Advanced Architect
- SnowPro Core Certification
Cloud Certifications
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect
- AWS Data Analytics Specialty
- Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect Expert
- Azure Data Engineer Associate
Leadership Expectations
- Ability to lead multi-million-dollar data transformation programs.
- Experience working with executive stakeholders and enterprise architecture boards.
- Strong consulting, solutioning, and customer-facing skills.
- Ability to mentor technical teams and establish best practices.
- Experience managing globally distributed teams.
Preferred Industry Experience
Experience in highly regulated industries such as:
- Pharmaceuticals & Life Sciences
- Healthcare
- Financial Services
- Insurance
- Retail & Consumer Goods
Success Measures
The Snowflake Architect will be expected to:
- Build scalable enterprise data architectures.
- Reduce data processing costs through optimized Snowflake design.
- Accelerate analytics and reporting capabilities.
- Enable self-service analytics and AI/ML readiness.
- Improve data quality, governance, and platform reliability.
- Drive successful cloud and data warehouse modernization initiatives.
Ideal Candidate Profile
A seasoned Data Architect with 12-18 years of experience who has led multiple enterprise cloud transformation programs, designed large-scale Snowflake ecosystems on AWS/Azure, and possesses deep expertise in Data Warehouses, Data Lakes, Data Marts, governance, performance optimization, and stakeholder management. This individual should be capable of operating at both executive and hands-on technical levels.
