Solution Architect

Responsibilities

Platform architecture & design

Own the end-to-end architecture of a federated, multi-institution medallion lakehouse (Bronze / Silver / Gold) on Azure Databricks and Microsoft Fabric

Define the federated, multi-tenant design that separates a centrally governed shared layer — shared transformation logic, a managed production catalog, and source-system security — from institution-administered catalogs and environments

Establish reference architectures, design patterns, and technical standards that each institution’s engineering work follows

Make and document key architecture and platform trade-off decisions, with clear rationale for technical and non-technical stakeholders

Design ingestion and integration from Workday (HCM, Finance, Student) and legacy SIS, LMS, CRM, and identity sources into the lakehouse

Governance & security architecture

Design the Unity Catalog security and access model across institutions, preserving institutional data autonomy within a shared governance framework

Define and protect the two-catalog boundary — the institution-administered production catalog versus the centrally managed production catalog — and keep that distinction explicit across all designs

Partner with governance leads to translate governance, data-quality, and stewardship policy into enforceable platform controls

Delivery enablement

Provide hands-on design authority and technical guidance to data engineers, BI developers, DevOps, and data-quality and governance staff

Review solution designs and key pull requests for architectural conformance

Produce and maintain architecture documentation, decision records, and diagrams

Support estimation, sequencing, and risk identification alongside the project and delivery leads

The responsibilities listed above are representative of the role and may be adjusted to meet organizational priorities.

Qualifications & Requirements

7–10 years designing and delivering cloud data platforms, including hands-on architecture of production analytics environments

Deep, hands-on expertise with Azure Databricks and Unity Catalog — lakehouse design, medallion architecture, and catalog and security modeling

Strong command of modern data-engineering patterns: ELT/ETL, orchestration, and data modeling across Bronze / Silver / Gold layers

Proven ability to design multi-source integration (ERP / SIS / LMS / CRM / identity) into a governed analytics platform

Experience defining security, access, and governance models in a shared or multi-team environment

Comfort operating as a senior individual contributor — setting standards and guiding engineers without direct-report authority

Excellent written and verbal communication, including architecture documentation and stakeholder-facing design reviews

Bachelor’s degree in a technical field or equivalent practical experience

Preferred Qualifications

Experience architecting federated or multi-tenant data platforms that serve multiple institutions or business units — central to this role

Microsoft Fabric and Power BI experience, including semantic models and workspace design

Azure Solutions Architect Expert and/or Databricks certification

Infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD familiarity (Terraform, DevOps pipelines) as it relates to platform design

Exposure to data-quality tooling such as Great Expectations

Experience in higher education and/or with Workday as a source system