Role Summary: Own end-to-end Snowflake platform architecture, strategy, and governance, ensuring scalability, security, and cost-efficiency across the enterprise data ecosystem.
Key Responsibilities
Define Snowflake architecture strategy including account structure, database/schema design, multi-cluster warehouse strategy, and resource monitors
Design enterprise-wide data ingestion, transformation, and consumption architecture (batch, micro-batch, streaming)
Establish best practices for performance tuning, cost governance, security, and data lifecycle management
Lead design decisions on data sharing (Secure Data Sharing, Data Marketplace), multi-region/multi-cloud deployments, and disaster recovery
Define and enforce RBAC/ABAC security models, network policies, encryption standards, and compliance (GDPR, HIPAA, SOX as applicable)
Architect integration patterns with upstream/downstream systems (data lakes, MDM, BI/analytics, ML platforms)
Drive platform-level automation: Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), CI/CD for Snowflake object deployment, monitoring/alerting frameworks
Provide technical leadership across development, data modeling, and DevOps teams; conduct architecture/design reviews
Own capacity planning, cost optimization initiatives, and vendor/tool evaluation
Act as the primary technical escalation point and liaison with stakeholders/leadership
Required Skills
12+ years in data engineering/architecture, with 5+ years specifically architecting Snowflake solutions at enterprise scale
Deep expertise in Snowflake internals: micro-partitioning, clustering, query optimization, warehouse scaling strategies
Strong background in cloud architecture (AWS/Azure/Google Cloud Platform) — networking, IAM, storage, security
Experience architecting solutions across structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data
Proven experience with Data Vault 2.0, dimensional modeling, and modern data platform patterns (Lakehouse, Data Mesh)
Hands-on with IaC (Terraform/CloudFormation) and orchestration (Airflow, dbt Cloud)
Strong stakeholder management, solutioning, and presentation skills
SnowPro Advanced Architect certification strongly preferred
Good to Have
Experience with Snowflake Cortex/AI features, Snowpark (Python/Java/Scala)
Prior experience as an enterprise data architect across multiple platforms (Redshift, Synapse, BigQuery, Databricks)
Experience leading large-scale cloud data warehouse migrations