Data Architect

Ness is a full lifecycle digital engineering firm offering digital advisory through scaled engineering services. Combining our core competence in engineering with the latest in digital strategy and technology, we seamlessly manage Digital Transformation journeys from strategy through execution to help businesses thrive in the digital economy. As your tech partner, we help engineer your company’s future with cloud and data. For more information, visit www.ness.com

Data Architect

Toronto, ON (4 days a week onsite)

The Role:

We are looking for a hands-on Data Architect to support a strategic data controls and governance initiative. This role will be responsible for assessing data flows, designing remediation solutions, defining data controls, supporting architecture decisions, and working with platform teams to implement improvements related to data minimization, encryption, tokenization, access controls, logging controls, and customer identifier management. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in data architecture, data governance, data security, integration architecture, and cloud data platforms.

Key Responsibilities:

• Data Architecture & Analysis
• Analyze end-to-end data flows across batch and API integrations.
• Develop current-state and target-state architecture diagrams.
• Perform data lineage, impact analysis, and dependency assessments.
• Identify data exposure risks across enterprise platforms.
• Document integration patterns and data movement across systems.
• Support architecture reviews and solution approvals.
• Data Governance & Controls
• Perform PII and sensitive data assessments.
• Define data classification, retention, and handling requirements.
• Design data minimization and data protection strategies.
• Support enterprise data governance initiatives.
• Define data ownership and stewardship models.
• Data Security & Privacy
• Design data protection controls including:
• Encryption
• Tokenization
• Data Masking
• Hashing
• Secure Logging
• Support RBAC and ABAC design.
• Review access models, service accounts, and privileged access requirements.
• Support security and privacy compliance initiatives.
• Integration & Platform Architecture
• Assess batch, API, messaging, and data lake architectures.
• Design secure data movement and interface patterns.
• Support modernization of customer and loyalty data integrations.
• Work closely with platform teams to implement approved architecture solutions.
• Stakeholder Management
• Collaborate with Business, Security, Data Governance, Platform, and Engineering teams.
• Facilitate architecture workshops and design sessions.
• Prepare executive and architecture review documentation.
• Support program planning, risk management, and roadmap development.

Qualifications and Skills:

Required Skills:

• Data Architecture & Solution Design
• Data Modeling (Conceptual, Logical, Physical)
• Data Lineage & Impact Analysis
• Integration Architecture
• Enterprise Data Management
• API & Batch Processing Architecture
• Data Governance
• PII Classification & Data Privacy
• Data Governance Frameworks
• Metadata Management
• Data Quality & Data Stewardship
• Data Retention & Archival Strategies
• Data Security
• Encryption (Data at Rest & In Transit)
• Tokenization & Data Masking
• RBAC & ABAC
• Access Governance
• Secure Logging & Monitoring
• Key Management Concepts
• Platforms & Technologies

Experience with some of the following:

• Microsoft Azure
• Azure Data Factory (ADF)
• Azure Data Lake (ADLS)
• Azure SQL
• Databricks
• Hadoop / Data Lake platforms
• IBM DataStage
• Kafka / Event Streaming platforms
• REST APIs
• Middleware / ESB platforms
• Salesforce
• SQL

Preferred Experience:

• Retail, Loyalty, Financial Services, Banking, or Customer Data domains.
• Experience with customer identity and master data management.
• Experience in data remediation, data governance, or security transformation initiatives.
• Experience working with cross-functional architecture and engineering teams.

Success Criteria:

The successful candidate will be able to:

• Analyze complex enterprise data flows and integrations.
• Identify data governance and security gaps.
• Design scalable and secure data architectures.
• Define remediation solutions for data exposure risks.
• Develop target-state data governance and protection frameworks.
• Support implementation of enterprise data controls and modernization initiatives.

Ness is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law