Data Architect

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain enterprise data architecture roadmaps.
• Lead development of master data, metadata, and governance strategies.
• Architect modern data platforms, data products, and integration services.
• Lead implementation of priority data products, platform capabilities, and integration patterns from concept through production deployment.
• Design solutions for structured and unstructured data.
• Partner with business stakeholders to translate requirements into technical solutions.
• Define data modeling standards and integration patterns.
• Develop proofs of concept, reference implementations, and reusable architecture patterns that accelerate delivery and adoption.
• Drive adoption of AI-ready architecture patterns, including vector search, knowledge retrieval, and machine learning workloads.
• Guide platform observability, automation, deployment, and governance practices.
• Participate in critical design, implementation, troubleshooting, and modernization efforts where direct architectural involvement will improve delivery outcomes.
• Facilitate architectural reviews and technology selection decisions, building consensus and obtaining formal approval through established governance forums.
• Establish practical, adoptable standards and validate them through implementation.
• Work with engineers and technical leaders to ensure architecture patterns can be delivered successfully in production.
• Mentor developers, engineers, and architects.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline strongly preferred. Four years of relevant technical experience may substitute for the degree requirement.
• 8+ years IT experience.
• 5+ years designing data solutions.
• 2+ years of solution, data, or enterprise architecture experience.
• Strong SQL Server expertise.
• Experience with data warehousing, dimensional modeling, data lakes, and integration platforms.
• Experience designing APIs and event-driven architectures.
• Experience building enterprise analytics solutions.
• Experience translating business needs into architecture decisions and practical technical solutions.
• Demonstrated experience designing and delivering production data platforms, data products, analytics solutions, or integration services.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master Data Management experience.
• Experience designing solutions that integrate structured and unstructured data for analytics, reporting, or AI workloads.
• Experience designing or implementing AI-enabled data platforms, including RAG, semantic search, vector databases, AI pipelines, knowledge graphs, or similar technologies.
• Experience with hybrid data and analytics platforms, including technologies such as Microsoft Fabric, Databricks, Power BI, Azure, and SQL Server.
• Experience with modern data engineering, integration, and transformation technologies such as C#/.NET, Python, CloverDX, SQL-based transformation frameworks, orchestration platforms, or similar technologies.
• Experience building data pipelines, integration services, or transformation solutions containing significant business logic.
• Experience with source control, automated testing, CI/CD, observability, deployment automation, and production-support practices.
• Experience creating reusable frameworks, shared libraries, reference implementations, or platform capabilities that accelerate delivery across teams.
• Experience enabling self-service analytics through trusted data products, curated datasets, semantic models, or governed reporting platforms.
• Utility industry experience.
• This position falls under the company’s Insider Threat Program and will have access to, and control over sensitive data, systems or assets. Enhanced personnel screening, which includes a background review, drug screen and psychological assessment, will be required if you are selected for this position

About Southern Company