Data Architect Job Description (2026): Duties, Skills and Salary
A data architect designs how an organization's data is structured, stored and moved: the warehouse or lakehouse layout, naming and modeling standards, access and governance rules, and the integration patterns that connect source systems to the platforms analysts and engineers use. They work a level above individual pipelines, setting the blueprint that data engineers implement.
Data architects sit between engineering, security and the business, so the role mixes technical depth with a lot of writing and reviewing: standards documents, architecture diagrams, data models and design reviews. Strong architects can explain why a schema or a governance rule exists, not just what it says, because teams will ask.
Data Architect job description template
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Data Architect
[Company] · [City and office days, or remote with the countries or time zones you hire in] · [Full-time]
About [Company]
[Two or three sentences on what your company does, who it serves and why this team matters now.]
About the role
[Company] is hiring a data architect to design the structure behind [team]'s data platform. You'll set modeling and governance standards, design how data moves between [source systems] and the warehouse, and review the designs other teams build against them.
What you'll do
- Design the target data architecture: warehouse or lakehouse layout, domains and data flows.
- Define modeling standards, naming conventions and documentation for [team]'s data assets.
- Review data engineers' pipeline and schema designs against the architecture.
- Set data governance rules: access tiers, retention, lineage and data quality ownership.
- Evaluate and select platform technologies such as [warehouse, orchestration tool, catalog].
- Plan migrations from legacy systems to the target architecture with minimal disruption.
- Partner with security and compliance on data classification and access controls.
- Advise product and analytics teams on how new data sources should fit the model.
What you'll bring
- [X]+ years in data engineering or architecture, including design of a production data platform.
- Deep knowledge of data modeling: dimensional modeling, normalization and schema design trade-offs.
- Hands-on experience with a cloud data warehouse such as [Snowflake, BigQuery or Redshift].
- Understanding of ETL/ELT patterns, orchestration tools and data quality practices.
- Experience setting standards or governance that other engineers had to follow.
- Clear technical writing: architecture docs and diagrams a non-architect can follow.
- Comfort saying no to a convenient shortcut that would break the model later.
Nice to have
- Experience with a data catalog or lineage tool such as Collibra or Atlan.
- Background in [domain, e.g. financial services, healthcare or e-commerce] data regulations.
- Familiarity with streaming architectures such as Kafka.
- A cloud architecture certification.
- Prior experience migrating a company off a legacy data warehouse.
What we offer
- [Pay range: e.g. $X–$Y base salary, plus bonus or equity if offered]
- [Remote-friendly, conference budget, senior technical mentorship]
- [Health cover, retirement or pension plan, paid time off, parental leave]
- [Work authorization: whether you can sponsor a visa or hire through an employer of record]
[Our process: a recruiter call, a system design interview on a data architecture problem, a review of a design doc you've written, and a final conversation with engineering leadership.]
[Your equal opportunity statement, and how candidates can ask for adjustments during the process]
Put the pay range in the ad. Several US states, including California, Colorado, New York and Washington, require it in job postings, and the EU Pay Transparency Directive gives applicants the right to know the starting pay or its range before the interview.
Data Architect duties by seniority
What the job usually looks like at each level. Pitch the ad at one level and say which in the title.
Junior
- Documents existing schemas and data flows under an architect's direction.
- Implements designs rather than setting them, with close review.
- Learns the platform's governance rules and where exceptions have been made.
Mid-level
- Owns the design for a domain, such as the marketing or finance data model.
- Reviews engineers' schema changes against standards.
- Writes architecture decision records that the team references later.
Senior
- Sets architecture strategy for the whole data platform.
- Leads major migrations and technology evaluations.
- Mentors engineers on modeling and resolves cross-team architecture disputes.
Data Architect career path
- Data Engineer
- Senior Data Engineer
- Data Architect
- Principal Data Architect or Head of Data Platform
Data architect is rarely a first job; most come from several years as a data or analytics engineer who took on design and standards work. From here, people move into principal architect roles, data platform leadership, or broader enterprise architecture covering systems beyond data.
Similar roles
- Data Engineer job description
Builds the pipelines an architect designs the structure for.
- Database Administrator job description
Focuses on operating and tuning a specific database rather than overall design.
- Cloud Architect job description
Designs infrastructure broadly, not just the data layer.
- Analytics Engineer job description
Builds transformation layers inside the structure an architect sets.
Data Architect job description FAQ
What does a data architect do?
Designs the structure of an organization's data platform: how it's modeled, stored, governed and moved between systems, then reviews other engineers' designs against those standards.
What skills should a data architect job description require?
Deep data modeling knowledge, hands-on experience with a cloud data warehouse, understanding of ETL/ELT and governance practices, and clear technical writing. Catalog tools and domain regulation knowledge are reasonable nice-to-haves.
Is data architect a senior role?
Yes, almost always. It typically requires several years as a data engineer first, so state the years of experience and the scope of the platform clearly in the posting.
How is a data architect different from a data engineer?
A data architect sets the blueprint: models, standards and governance. A data engineer builds and maintains the pipelines and tables that follow that blueprint. Smaller companies often combine both into one role.