Overview

Cloud Architect – AWS Lake Formation Specialist

POSITION SUMMARY

We are seeking a Senior AWS Lake Formation Architect Specialist to design, implement, and govern secure, scalable data lake and lakehouse architectures on AWS. The ideal candidate will bring strong hands-on expertise in AWS Lake Formation, cross-account data sharing, and modern open table formats such as Apache Iceberg and Apache Hudi.

In this role, you will lead the design of enterprise-scale data governance frameworks, implement fine-grained access controls, and enable secure data sharing across multiple AWS accounts and business units. You will collaborate with data engineering, security, and business teams to deliver scalable, high-performance, and compliant data solutions.

Primary Location: Toronto, ON (Fully Remote)

Employment Type: Contract

Duration: 3-4 months

Data Lake Design & Architecture

• Architect end-to-end data lake and lakehouse solutions using AWS Lake Formation, S3, Glue Data Catalog, Athena, Redshift Spectrum, and EMR

• Design and implement open table format strategies using Apache Iceberg and Apache Hudi to support ACID transactions, schema evolution, time travel, and efficient upserts and deletes for CDC use cases

Governance & Security

• Implement fine-grained, column-, row-, and cell-level access controls using AWS Lake Formation permissions

• Design tag-based access control (LF-TBAC) strategies and manage data lake administrator roles

• Establish data classification, lineage tracking, and auditing using CloudTrail and Lake Formation audit logs

Cross-Account Data Sharing

• Architect secure, governed data sharing across multiple AWS accounts, business units, and external partner organizations using Lake Formation resource links, named resource grants, and LF-tags

• Design hub-and-spoke or data mesh architectures where a central governance account manages the Glue Data Catalog and grants controlled access to consumer accounts

• Implement cross-account Iceberg and Hudi table sharing while ensuring metadata consistency and permission enforcement across account boundaries

• Manage AWS Resource Access Manager (AWS RAM) integration for sharing catalog resources

• Establish cross-region and cross-organization data sharing patterns using AWS Organizations while maintaining compliance boundaries

• Troubleshoot cross-account permission issues, including IAM role chaining, trust policies, and Lake Formation grant propagation

Table Formats & Data Engineering

• Select and implement appropriate open table formats, including Iceberg, Hudi, and Delta Lake, based on workload requirements such as streaming upserts, batch CDC, and analytics-heavy read patterns

• Manage Iceberg and Hudi table maintenance, including compaction, clustering, snapshot expiration, and manifest optimization

• Integrate Iceberg and Hudi tables with Glue Data Catalog, Athena, EMR (Spark), and Redshift Spectrum for unified querying

• Design streaming ingestion pipelines using Kinesis, MSK, and DMS to support near-real-time lake updates

Compliance & Optimization

• Ensure architectures meet regulatory requirements such as GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC 2 through encryption, lineage, and access auditing

• Optimize partitioning, file formats such as Parquet and ORC, and storage tiering for performance and cost efficiency

Stakeholder Collaboration

• Collaborate with data engineers, data scientists, security and compliance teams, and business stakeholders to translate governance and data-sharing requirements into architecture

• Lead migrations from legacy data warehouses and on-premises data lakes to AWS lakehouse architectures with transactional table formats

• 5+ years of experience in data engineering or architecture, including 2+ years of hands-on experience with AWS Lake Formation

• Strong hands-on expertise in AWS Lake Formation, AWS Glue Data Catalog, Amazon S3, Athena, Redshift, EMR, and IAM

• Proven experience designing cross-account and cross-organization data-sharing frameworks using resource links, LF-tags, and AWS RAM

• Practical knowledge of Apache Iceberg and Apache Hudi, including table internals, metadata and manifest structures, compaction strategies, and integration with AWS query engines

• Hands-on production experience implementing and managing open table formats such as Iceberg or Hudi

• Proficiency in Infrastructure as Code tools such as CloudFormation, Terraform, or AWS CDK

• Strong scripting and programming skills in Python, PySpark, and SQL

• Solid understanding of data security, encryption, access management, and compliance frameworks

• Experience designing scalable, secure, and governed multi-account AWS data architectures

• Familiarity with Delta Lake and its capabilities for comparative architecture decisions

• Experience implementing data mesh architectures

• AWS certifications such as AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty or AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional

• Experience with streaming data technologies such as Amazon Kinesis, MSK, and DMS

Adastra is a global leader in AI and data-driven transformation, helping organizations lead with artificial intelligence—responsibly, strategically, and at scale. With over 25 years of experience, Adastra empowers enterprise clients to unlock business value through data innovation, operational excellence, and smart customer engagement.

Trusted by some of the world’s most prominent brands, Adastra delivers end-to-end solutions grounded in thoughtful strategy, robust governance, and deep technical expertise. From defining vision to ensuring execution, Adastra guides organizations through every stage of their AI, data and cloud journey—building future-ready capabilities and delivering measurable, lasting impact.

Adastra serves clients across key industries including financial services, automotive, manufacturing, technology, media and telecom (TMT), healthcare, retail, and professional services. The company employs more than 2,000 professionals across North America, Europe, and Asia.