Data Architect

Title: Data ArchitectLocation: RemoteEkman Associates, Inc. is a Southern California based company focused on the following services: Management Consulting, Professional Staffing Solutions, Executive Recruiting and Managed Services.Summary : As a Data Architect, you will lead the strategy, design, and implementation of a centralized data ecosystem that powers analytics and operational platforms across the organization. This role emphasizes Microsoft Fabric as the core platform to unify real-time event streams and historical/curated datasets across an enterprise landscape. You'll define target-state architectures, data modeling standards, and governance patterns while partnering with engineering, product, security, and analytics teams to ensure data is trusted, scalable, and actionable.Responsibilities :Microsoft Fabric Architecture & Strategy: Define the end-to-end architecture for Fabric (Lakehouse/Warehouse, OneLake, Data Factory, Real-Time Analytics/Eventstream, semantic models) to support cross-domain Operations & Technology use cases.Enterprise Data Centralization: Drive consolidation of fragmented datasets into a centralized, discoverable platform designing domain-aligned data products and shared datasets to reduce duplication and improve time-to-insight.Real-Time + Historical Data Design: Architect solutions that blend streaming data (operational telemetry, events, logs) with historical data (transactions, master/reference data) to enable both operational visibility and long-term analytics.Lakehouse & Warehouse Patterns: Establish patterns for bronze/silver/gold layers, Delta-based designs, data virtualization where appropriate, and performance strategies (partitioning, optimization) for scalable consumption.Data Modeling & Semantic Standards: Define canonical models (dimensional, data vault, or hybrid), conformed dimensions, and semantic layer practices to ensure consistent reporting and self-service analytics across teams.Integration & Pipeline Architecture: Guide ingestion and orchestration patterns across APIs, databases, files, SaaS platforms, and event streams ensuring resiliency, observability, and cost-aware scaling within Fabric.Data Governance, Security & Quality: Partner with security, privacy, and governance stakeholders to implement access controls, lineage, data contracts, quality frameworks, and lifecycle management to build trust and compliance.Technical Leadership & Enablement: Serve as a hands-on architectural leader reviewing designs, mentoring engineers, setting standards, and translating business needs into scalable technical blueprints and roadmaps.Qualifications:Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent experience.6+ years of experience in data engineering and/or data architecture roles, including ownership of enterprise-scale data platforms.Strong experience designing lakehouse and/or warehouse architectures, including layered data patterns (raw curated consumable).Expertise in SQL and strong proficiency with Python (and/or PySpark) for data engineering and automation.Experience architecting data solutions on Microsoft Fabric and/or Azure (or equivalent cloud platforms), including security and operational best practices.Proven ability to design for both real-time (streaming/event-driven) and batch pipelines, and to align architecture to operational and analytical outcomes.Strong communication skills able to align stakeholders, document architectures, and influence technical direction across multiple teams.Deep hands-on experience with Microsoft Fabric capabilities (OneLake, Lakehouse/Warehouse, Data Factory, Eventstream/Real-Time Analytics, semantic modeling/Power BI).Experience with event streaming and messaging architectures (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis, Event Hubs) and patterns for CDC and near-real-time ingestion.Experience with data governance tooling and practices (cataloging, lineage, data contracts, privacy classification, retention).Familiarity with CI/CD and infrastructure automation (e.g., GitHub Actions/Azure DevOps, Terraform/Bicep) and environment promotion strategies.Experience building robust observability (logging, alerting, SLAs/SLOs, data quality monitoring) for enterprise pipelines.Background supporting large-scale Operations & Technology environments (service operations, workplace technology, infrastructure, endpoint management, identity, security, network).Media, entertainment, or consumer technology experience especially where reliability, scale, and cross-domain data integration are critical. Strong presentation skills, with the ability to create compelling data narratives.Qualified Candidates Only : If you wish to learn more about this opportunity and additional qualifications/responsibilities, please submit your resume. To learn more about Ekman Associates, Inc. please visit our website at