Data Architect (Remote)

Requirements:5+ years in data architecture/data engineering, with at least 2+ years in an architect or lead capacity.Strong SQL: advanced query optimisation, indexing, partitioning strategies.Data modeling dimensional modelling (star/snowflake schema), normalization/denormalization tradeoffs, entity relationship design.Cloud data platforms: hands-on with AWS (Redshift, S3 Glue), Azure (Synapse, Data Factory), or GCP (BigQuery, Dataflow).Big data ecosystems: Spark, Hadoop, or Kafka for large-scale/streaming data.Data warehousing Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, or Databricks.ETL/ELT pipeline design: Airflow, dbt, Fivetran, or similar orchestration tools.Data governance & security: data lineage, access control, compliance (GDPR/SOC2), master data management.Strongly Preferred:Experience architecting systems supporting ML/AI pipelines (feature stores, vector DBs, real-time inference data flows).Programming in Python or Scala for pipeline development.API/microservices architecture exposure, understanding how data systems integrate with application layers.Experience with data mesh/data lake house architectures.Prior experience presenting architecture decisions to leadership/stakeholders.Nice-to-Have (Differentiators):Certifications: AWS/GCP/Azure data architecture certs.Experience in a high-growth startup (built systems from scratch, not just maintained legacy).Exposure to real-time/streaming architecture (Kafka, Kinesis, Flink).