Lead Data Architect

About SHR Consulting Group

SHR Consulting Group, LLC is a small business delivering enterprise IT, cybersecurity, and program management services to the Department of Defense and federal civilian agencies. We support mission-critical infrastructure at the Pentagon and across the National Capital Region, and we invest in our people through competitive compensation, professional certification support, and long-term career growth on stable, multi-year programs.

Position Summary

The Lead Data Architect will establish and evolve the overarching data architecture while ensuring that pipelines, integrations, data products, external sharing mechanisms, and AI/ML data services remain scalable, secure, maintainable, and aligned with FEMA's enterprise architecture.

This position is CONTINGENT UPON CONTRACT AWARD. Candidates selected for consideration must be willing to authorize the submission of their resume and qualifications in support of our proposal response.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design and evolution of FEMA’s enterprise data architecture.
• Design enterprise-wide cloud data platforms and scalable data-processing architectures.
• Develop and govern Medallion/Lakehouse architecture patterns.
• Design and oversee metadata-driven ingestion frameworks.
• Design scalable real-time and streaming architectures.
• Establish architectural patterns supporting growth in data sources, data volume, velocity, concurrency, and users.
• Ensure new pipelines, integrations, and data products conform to FEMA’s architecture standards.
• Define reusable architecture and integration patterns rather than one-off implementations.
• Oversee end-to-end data lineage from source systems through curated data layers and downstream consumption.
• Support technical implementation of FEMA data governance requirements, including:
  • Metadata management
  • Data classification and tagging
  • Cataloging
  • Fine-grained access controls
  • Data lineage and provenance
• Develop architecture supporting secure external data exchange and ingestion.
• Architect data services supporting AI/ML workloads, including feature pipelines, curated datasets, embedding/vector stores, and retrieval pipelines as required.
• Support platform capacity planning, performance engineering, elastic scaling, workload isolation, and cost optimization.
• Troubleshoot complex enterprise pipeline and architecture issues.
• Provide architecture guidance and technical leadership to engineering teams and Government stakeholders.
• Maintain architecture documentation sufficient for Government personnel or successor contractors to operate and extend the platform.

Minimum Qualifications

• Extensive experience designing enterprise-scale cloud data platforms and architectures.
• Demonstrated experience with Databricks Lakehouse or comparable enterprise cloud data platforms.
• Strong hands-on knowledge of Medallion architecture.
• Demonstrated expertise designing metadata-driven ingestion frameworks.
• Demonstrated expertise designing scalable real-time streaming topologies.
• Experience designing data architectures within Federal cloud or similarly regulated environments.
• Strong understanding of enterprise data integration, data modeling, lineage, metadata management, governance, and access controls.
• Experience designing architectures supporting high-volume batch and streaming workloads.
• Ability to troubleshoot complex data pipeline and architecture failures.
• Experience establishing reusable enterprise architecture patterns and technical standards.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to communicate architecture decisions to both technical teams and Government leadership.

Highly Desired Technical Experience

• Databricks
• Apache Spark
• Delta Lake
• Python / PySpark
• SQL
• Lakehouse / Medallion architecture
• Structured Streaming or comparable streaming frameworks
• Cloud-native data services
• Data catalogs and lineage
• API and data-exchange architectures
• CI/CD and DevSecOps
• Data security and fine-grained access control
• FinOps and cloud architecture optimization
• AI/ML data architectures
• Vector databases / embedding stores / RAG architectures

Preferred Qualifications

• FEMA or DHS experience.
• Experience architecting enterprise Federal data modernization programs.
• Experience integrating large numbers of heterogeneous modern and legacy source systems.
• Experience designing secure external data-sharing architectures.
• Experience designing governed data foundations supporting AI/ML applications.
• Knowledge of NIST, FISMA, FedRAMP, DHS 4300A, and Federal data/privacy requirements.
• Databricks architecture or engineering certifications.

Security Clearance

• U.S. Citizenship.
• Must be able to obtain and maintain the Government-required suitability/fitness determination and IT access authorization.

Work Environment

Benefits

• Competitive salary commensurate with experience and clearance level.
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• 401(k) with company contribution.
• Paid time off and eleven federal holidays.
• Certification reimbursement and training 
• Life and disability insurance.

Salary Range 155,000 – 180,000 USD. The salary range represents a general guideline; SHR considers a number of factors when determining the base salary offers such as the scope and responsibilities of the position, and the candidate's experience, education, skills and current market conditions.

SHR Consulting Group, LLC is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status