Data Architect

Data Architect - GCP / BigQuery / Power BI

Experience: 10+ years in data engineering and architecture, including 4+ years designing data platforms on GCP

Key Responsibilities

Discovery and assessment

• Assess the current client data landscape: the PostgreSQL schemas, volumes and growth; the third-party spreadsheets; the REST API integrations; and the HTML sources.
• Run workshops with business owners, product, IT, security and report consumers. Capture KPIs, reporting needs, data freshness SLAs and pain points.
• Document current data flows, dependencies, data ownership and data quality issues.

Target architecture design

• Design the end-to-end data platform on GCP: ingestion, landing zone (GCS), BigQuery warehouse, transformation, semantic layer and Power BI consumption.

• Define an ingestion pattern for each source type:

• PostgreSQL: CDC or incremental loads (for example, Datastream)

• REST APIs: Cloud Run or Cloud Functions with Pub/Sub or Cloud Scheduler

• Spreadsheets: GCS or Google Sheets with schema validation

• HTML files: parsing and extraction pipelines

• Define the BigQuery layers (Raw Curated Marts), naming conventions and how datasets and projects are organized.

• Design dimensional data models (star schemas and SCD handling) optimized for Power BI.

• Pick the orchestration and transformation stack (Cloud Composer, Dataform/dbt, Dataflow) and record each choice in Architecture Decision Records.

Scalability, performance and cost

• Plan capacity for 10-20% monthly growth. That rate takes ~1 TB to roughly 3-9 TB within 12 months.
• Set standards for partitioning, clustering, materialized views, BI Engine and query optimization.
• Recommend a BigQuery pricing model (on-demand or Editions/slot reservations), storage lifecycle policies and cost guardrails.

Power BI integration

• Define the connectivity approach (Import, Direct Query or Composite), gateway needs and refresh strategy, including incremental refresh.
• Guide semantic model design, row-level security (RLS) and workspace/deployment strategy.

Security, governance and quality

• Design IAM, VPC Service Controls, CMEK encryption, and column- and row-level security (policy tags).
• Set up cataloguing, lineage and metadata management (Dataplex), plus PII classification and masking.
• Define a data quality and observability framework: validation, reconciliation and alerting.

Delivery enablement

• Produce the architecture blueprint, HLD/LLD, NFRs (SLA, HA, DR, RPO/RTO), a phased roadmap and cost and effort estimates.
• Define environment strategy (Dev/QA/Prod), CI/CD and Terraform (Infrastructure-as-Code) standards.
• Hand over to the Tech Lead and act as design authority during implementation.
• Present architecture options and trade-offs to client leadership.

Technical Skills Required

Must have

• Expert in BigQuery: modelling, partitioning/clustering, performance tuning, cost and slot management
• GCP data services: GCS, Dataflow, Datastream, Pub/Sub, Cloud Composer, Cloud Run/Functions
• Deep PostgreSQL knowledge: CDC/logical replication, migrating TB-scale datasets
• Data warehousing and dimensional modelling (Kimball), SCD, medallion architecture
• ELT with Dataform or dbt, plus strong SQL
• Integrating REST APIs, spreadsheets and semi-structured and HTML data
• Power BI architecture: semantic models, DirectQuery vs Import, gateways, RLS, performance with BigQuery
• GCP security and governance: IAM, VPC-SC, KMS, policy tags, Dataplex
• Terraform and CI/CD

Good to have

• GCP Professional Cloud Architect or Professional Data Engineer certification
• Python
• Data observability tools
• Streaming analytics experience
• Telecom domain exposure

Soft skills

• Stakeholder management and workshop facilitation
• Can present trade-offs to executives