Snowflake Data Architect

About the Role: We’re hiring a Snowflake Data Architect on behalf of a financial services client to support the optimization and expansion of its Snowflake environment. This role combines architectural leadership with hands-on delivery, focusing on Snowflake performance and cost optimization, medallion architecture remodeling, production-ready Snowflake Cortex deployments, and platform upgrades and expansion.

Key Responsibilities: Snowflake optimization: Assess the existing environment and implement improvements to query performance, warehouse configuration, workload management, and cost efficiency. Medallion architecture remodeling: Review and redesign bronze, silver, and gold data layers to improve data quality, maintainability, and downstream usability. Snowflake Cortex delivery: Take Cortex use cases from development into production, establishing appropriate evaluation, security, monitoring, and operational support practices. Platform upgrades and expansion: Plan and deliver platform enhancements, feature adoption, and onboarding of new data sources and workloads, with appropriate testing and release controls. Security and governance: Partner with internal teams to ensure architectural decisions align with the client’s access controls, data protection requirements, and governance standards. Technical leadership: Work closely with data engineering, analytics, and business stakeholders to define priorities, document architectural decisions, and guide implementation.

Required Experience: Strong experience designing and delivering enterprise Snowflake architectures. Hands-on expertise in Snowflake performance tuning, query optimization, warehouse sizing, and cost management. Proven experience designing or remodeling medallion architectures and associated data pipelines. Hands-on experience with Snowflake Cortex, including deploying and supporting production workloads. Strong SQL skills and experience with data modeling, transformation, and ETL/ELT processes. Experience managing platform changes and expanding Snowflake environments while maintaining production stability. A strong understanding of data security, governance, and operational requirements within financial services or similarly regulated environments. Ability to translate business requirements into practical architectural designs and work directly with engineering teams to deliver them.

Preferred Experience: Previous delivery experience within financial services. Familiarity with CI/CD, automated testing, and infrastructure as code for data platforms. Experience establishing monitoring, documentation, and support processes for production data and AI workloads.

Engagement: This is a contract position based in New York City, with a hybrid working arrangement. The successful contractor will be expected to contribute at both the architecture and implementation levels.