Software Architect - Data Platform

About G-P

Our leading SaaS-based Global Employment Platform™ enables clients to expand into over 180 countries quickly and efficiently, without the complexities of establishing local entities. At G-P, we’re dedicated to breaking down barriers to global business and creating opportunities for everyone, everywhere.

Our diverse, remote-first teams are essential to our success. We empower our Dream Team members with flexibility and resources, fostering an environment where innovation thrives and every contribution is valued and celebrated.

About The Position

As the Data Architect for the G-P Data Platform, you will be responsible for defining and driving the execution of our target-state, Databricks-native architecture across our data platform. This role balances strategic technical leadership with hands-on technical execution, ensuring our engineering investments align directly with customer expectations and our long-term technology vision.

Reporting into the Architecture team, you will work in close partnership with Product Management, Cloud Operations, Business Operations, and cross-functional engineering squads. You will act as a trusted technical advocate and mentor, driving platform consistency, lowering total cost of ownership (TCO), and further enhancing our world-class data analytics and reporting capabilities.

What You Will Do

• Target-State Architecture: Design and drive the execution of a scalable, cloud-native target-state architecture across the end-to-end software platform.
• Ingestion Architecture: Define architectural patterns for scalable automated data ingestion.
• Hands-on Execution & PoCs: Deliver hands-on proof-of-concepts (PoCs) alongside engineering teams using SQL, PySpark, Serverless Python, or other platform languages to validate design decisions.
• Governance & Consistency: Drive architecture consistency across all platform components to harmonize integration, maximize component reuse, and eliminate technical debt. Act as an SME for data governance designs and implementation.
• Security & Compliance: Define and enforce data platform security standards and infrastructure security to prevent platform and data breaches.
• Product & Business Alignment: Partner with Product Management to define our application analytics strategy and gain a deep business understanding of aligned domain areas.
• Technology Innovation: Serve as the strategic sounding board for validating and introducing new technologies, open-source solutions, and 3rd-party applications.
• System Reliability: Ensure system and infrastructure architecture design results in high availability, low latency, and minimal service outages as a core measure of success.
• Engineering Excellence: Evangelize architectural best practices, educate engineering teams, and advocate for continuous improvement and developer enablement.
• AIDLC Contribution: Contribute to our AI-Powered agentic development capabilities as they relate to the data platform, data transformation, and analytics.

What We Are Looking For

Minimum Requirements

• Data Architecture Experience: Extensive data architecture background driving architectural and design decisions in Cloud data platforms within software-centric organizations. Strong Data Modeling and Governance experience.
• Data Platforms: Strong Databricks experience (or another lakehouse platform based on Spark).
• Technical Proficiency: Proven hands-on capability with the modern data stack and a history of building/designing complex technical solutions. Expertise in developing solutions with SQL and PySpark.
• AI Skills: Experience with using agentic AI in the SDLC for efficiency gains, and using GenAI in data workloads as a tool for data analysis.
• Data Design Skills: Proven ability to design data schemas for analytics and reporting consumption.
• Analytical & Data Skills: Demonstrated ability to structure and process qualitative/quantitative data to evaluate Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and make sound technology trade-off decisions.
• Communication & Leadership: Effective communicator with a proven ability to explain complex technical concepts and gain buy-in for architectural strategies across cross-functional teams.
• Problem Solving: Ability to thrive in unstructured or ambiguous environments, conceptualizing and designing creative solutions to complex technical challenges.
• Cloud & Domain Expertise: Focused experience in one or more of the following: Security and Access Control, Cloud Operations & Infrastructure, or 3rd-Party Integrations.
• Industry Experience: Minimum of 15 years in the software industry, with a minimum of 3 years in an architecture position.

Preferred Qualifications

• Cloud Platforms: Hands-on experience architecting on major public cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Serverless: Experience with developing and supporting serverless workloads on a public cloud platform.
• Security Standards: Deep knowledge of modern infrastructure security protocols, data privacy compliance, and access control frameworks.
• Developer Enablement: Track record of active involvement in developer enablement, engineering mentorship, and promoting continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) best practices.

Benefits & Perks

• Annual bonus (dependent on individual and company performance)
• Generous paid parental leave
• Flexible time off
• Spending accounts
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Sabbatical after 5 years