Senior Data Architect

Overview
DecisionPoint seeks a Senior Data Architect to lead the design, governance, and validation of the enterprise data architecture for DCIPS Future, a Department of War (DoW) modernization program supporting Casualty and Mortuary Affairs operations across the Military Services.The Senior Data Architect will maintain secure, reliable, and scalable data architectures within AWS GovCloud environments authorized for applicable Impact Levels, including IL2, IL4, and IL5. The architect will work with mission stakeholders, system architects, cybersecurity personnel, database administrators, developers, and testers to ensure data integrity, availability, privacy, and accurate inter-Service data exchange.

This position is remote within the United States. Periodic travel may be required.

Duties & Responsibilities

The Senior Data Architect will:

• Perform an initial architecture assessment and develop a recovery plan that inventories existing artifacts, identifies gaps and risks, establishes an authoritative baseline, and prioritizes corrective actions.

• Develop and maintain conceptual, logical, and physical data models.

• Define schemas, entity relationships, business rules, data standards, and validation requirements.

• Maintain data dictionaries, metadata, lineage records, source-to-target mappings, and data-flow diagrams.

• Ensure alignment among mission workflows, application functions, databases, APIs, interfaces, and reporting requirements.

• Establish data-architecture governance, including modeling standards, architecture decisions, schema versioning, and change control.

• Lead data-migration planning, including profiling, cleansing, transformation, mock migrations, reconciliation, cutover, and post-conversion validation.

• Design for 99.99% availability, rapid failover, scalability, backup, and recovery.

• Incorporate privacy and security requirements, including data minimization, access controls, encryption, masking, auditability, and retention.

• Define secure API and data-exchange patterns for Military Service components and external systems.

• Lead or support required architecture, database, reporting, and data-migration deliverables.

• Manage and provide mentorship to a team of database administrators, data engineers, and developers.

• Present architecture decisions, risks, dependencies, and recommendations to contractor and government stakeholders.

Qualifications

Clearance

• Active Secret security clearance.

Education and Experience

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Engineering, or a related technical field.

• At least seven years of experience in data architecture, database architecture, or data engineering.

• Experience leading data architecture for a complex, mission-critical system.

• Federal or DoW experience strongly preferred.

Technical Knowledge

• Expertise in conceptual, logical, and physical data modeling.

• Experience with PostgreSQL and AWS services such as Amazon RDS or Aurora.

• Experience with AWS GovCloud or another regulated cloud environment.

• Knowledge of schema design, normalization, indexing, metadata management, data lineage, and data-quality controls.

• Experience planning and validating complex legacy-data migrations.

• Experience designing highly available database solutions with replication, backup, recovery, and failover capabilities.

• Knowledge of DoWAF, the DoW Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide, applicable DISA Security Technical Implementation Guides, and Zero Trust principles.

• Experience protecting personally identifiable information and other sensitive government data.

• Experience with API-based data exchange, reporting, analytics, and business-intelligence systems.

Preferred Certifications and Experience

• AWS Certified Data Engineer 6 Associate, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, or another current and relevant AWS certification.

• TOGAF certification or formal DoDAF training.

• Applicable DoW 8140 qualification for the assigned DoW Cyberspace Workforce Framework work role.

• Experience supporting Casualty and Mortuary Affairs operations, personnel, case-management, or similarly sensitive mission systems.

Skills

• Strong analytical and architectural decision-making skills.

• Exceptional attention to data quality and model integrity.

• Ability to produce clear and concise technical documentation.

• Ability to communicate effectively with technical and nontechnical stakeholders.

• Ability to take ownership, resolve inherited issues, and drive architecture decisions to completion.