[Hiring] Data Architect @World Vision Canada

Role Description

The Data Architect is responsible for the design, governance and integrity of World Vision Canada's data architecture. The role defines how data is structured, stored, integrated and made available for reporting, analytics and artificial intelligence, and translates business information requirements into a well-governed and reusable data foundation. It ensures that data is managed as an enterprise asset that is consistent across systems, reliable for decision-making, and able to support the organization as its technology environment changes, thereby supporting the organization's mission.

Reporting to the Director, Data Intelligence, the incumbent develops the organization's data architecture framework and principles for the Director's approval and is thereafter accountable for their application across the enterprise. The incumbent owns the data architecture for the multi-year transformation program and sets the multi-year direction and roadmap for the organization's data architecture and platform. Support for day-to-day operations is provided on an as-available basis and is ad-hoc in nature. This is a hands-on role, with results achieved through modernizing data flows, publishing standards, documentation and design reviews.

Responsibilities

• Designs the enterprise data architecture.
• Develops the conceptual, logical and physical data architecture, including the data platform, canonical data models, and the standards that govern how data is structured, stored and moved.
• Develops and presents the data architecture for senior leadership approval.
• Defines data integration and interoperability standards.
• Architects governed, reusable data products.
• Establishes data quality, master data and lifecycle standards.
• Sets standards for AI and machine learning data use and platform portability.
• Establishes data security and protection standards.
• Produces and maintains architecture documentation.
• Governs solution and vendor designs through to delivery.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.
• Enterprise-architecture or cloud data-platform certification, for example TOGAF or a recognized cloud data credential.
• Ten or more years working in data management disciplines such as data modelling, data engineering or data science.
• Five or more years in data architecture, including the design of lakehouse or warehouse-native patterns and of batch and streaming data flows in Snowflake and other cloud data platforms.
• Demonstrated accountability for an enterprise data architecture, including setting standards adopted across delivery teams and vendors, and presenting architecture direction to senior leadership for approval.
• Demonstrated delivery of master-data and golden-record solutions, and of governed, reusable data products, as well as warehouse-native customer data platforms.
• Demonstrated experience setting data design direction for solution architects and delivery partners within an established technology or architecture function.
• Experience designing data protection, classification and access controls for sensitive data.
• Experience in a nonprofit or mission-driven organization.

Technical skills

• Defining data and application-programming-interface contracts in advance of build, including the use of schema registries and contract testing.
• Advanced data modelling across conceptual, logical and physical layers, relational and dimensional, and strong SQL.
• Familiarity with modern transformation frameworks, for example dbt, ELT patterns, and orchestration tooling, sufficient to define standards and review implementations.
• Familiarity with Python or similar scripting languages for prototyping and automation.
• Understanding of continuous integration and delivery and automated testing practices for data, including contract and schema testing, sufficient to embed them in standards and review vendor delivery against them.
• Command of modern data architecture paradigms, including data mesh, data fabric and lakehouse, sufficient to select between them and defend the choice.
• Familiarity with data catalog and metadata management tooling.
• Proficiency with architecture modelling notations and tooling for producing models and diagrams, for example ArchiMate or UML.
• Experience working in environments using Enterprise Agile frameworks.

Soft skills and competencies

• Communicates clearly with both technical specialists and non-technical stakeholders.
• Builds agreement on design direction across technical and business teams.
• Applies sound judgement to complex and ambiguous design problems, balancing long-term architectural integrity against near-term delivery needs.
• Records design decisions, applies standards consistently, and supports recommendations with evidence.

Benefits

• Health Spending Account
• Up to 6% matched pension contributions
• Parental leave top-up
• Generous paid vacation, sick days, wellness and personal days
• Office closed extra days before long weekends (6x/year)