[Hiring] Principal Data Architect @GEICO

Role Description

We are hiring a Principal Data Architect to define and drive our enterprise data architecture vision, centered on a domain-oriented data mesh. You will set the technical direction for how data is owned, produced, discovered, and consumed across the company, and you will turn that direction into a multi-year roadmap that business and engineering leaders can fund and follow.

This is a senior, hands-on technical leadership role. You will partner with domain teams, platform engineering, security, and the executive team to move from centralized, pipeline-driven data delivery to federated ownership of data as a product, supported by a self-serve platform and computational governance.

What You'll Do

• Architecture and technical direction
  • Define the target-state data architecture built on data mesh principles: domain ownership, data as a product, self-serve data infrastructure, and federated computational governance.
  • Establish domain boundaries and ownership models with business and engineering leaders, using domain-driven design and bounded contexts.
  • Design reference architectures for data products, including ingestion, storage, transformation, serving (batch, streaming, and API), and consumption patterns.
  • Specify data product standards: interfaces, SLAs and SLOs, schemas and contracts, metadata, lineage, quality checks, and access policies.
  • Guide the design of the self-serve data platform so domain teams can build, publish, and operate data products with minimal friction.
• Vision and roadmap
  • Own the multi-year data architecture vision and a phased roadmap covering pilot domains, platform capabilities, migration of legacy warehouse and lake assets, and decommissioning.
  • Build the business case and investment narrative for executive stakeholders, including trade-offs, sequencing, risks, and expected value.
  • Create a maturity model and adoption plan that meets domains where they are and tracks progress over time.
• Governance and standards
  • Design federated governance: shared policies for security, privacy, quality, interoperability, and cataloging that are automated and enforced in the platform rather than through manual review.
  • Define enterprise canonical models, shared reference data, and cross-domain interoperability patterns where they add value.
  • Partner with security, privacy, and compliance teams on regulatory requirements (for example GDPR, CCPA, SOX, HIPAA as applicable).
• Leadership and influence
  • Chair the architecture review forum and act as the escalation point for cross-domain design decisions.
  • Mentor architects and senior engineers, and coach domain teams in data product thinking.
  • Evaluate and select technologies, run proofs of concept, and publish clear architecture decision records.
  • Represent the data architecture vision internally and, where relevant, to customers, partners, and industry peers.

Qualifications

• 12+ years in data architecture, data engineering, or platform architecture, with at least 3 years in a principal, staff, or enterprise architect role.
• Demonstrated experience designing or leading a data mesh, data product, or domain-oriented data architecture, ideally through at least one production rollout.
• Deep knowledge of modern data stack patterns: cloud data warehouses and lakehouses (Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift or similar), open table formats (Iceberg, Delta, Hudi), streaming (Kafka, Flink, Spark Structured Streaming) and orchestration.
• Strong data modeling skills across dimensional, data vault, event-driven, and domain models, and the judgment to know when each fits.
• Hands-on experience with data contracts, schema management, metadata and catalog tooling, lineage, and data quality and observability frameworks.
• Working command of governance, security, and privacy architecture, including policy-as-code, fine-grained access control, and data classification.
• Proven ability to translate architecture into a roadmap and business case, and to win support from executives and engineering leaders.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including the ability to make complex trade-offs clear to non-technical audiences.
• Experience on at least one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and fluency in SQL and at least one general-purpose language such as Python, Scala, or Java.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Requirements

• Annual Salary: $136,325.00 - $212,175.00
• The above annual salary range is a general guideline. Multiple factors are taken into consideration to arrive at the final hourly rate/annual salary to be offered to the selected candidate.
• GEICO will consider sponsoring a new qualified applicant for employment authorization for this position.

Benefits

• The GEICO Pledge:
• Great Company: Protecting customers through life’s twists and turns with innovation and integrity.
• Great Careers: Personalized development programs, mentorship, and certification assistance.
• Great Culture: Inclusive and collaborative culture rooted in shared success.
• Great Rewards: Competitive pay, benefits, and flexibility to support your well-being and future.