UNFI · 1 month ago
Principal Data Architect-Remote
United States
Full-time
Remote
Lead/Staff
$680/wk - $680/wk
10+ years expUNFI is North America’s premier grocery wholesaler, focused on delivering a wide variety of fresh and branded products. The Principal IT Solutions Data Architect will lead end-to-end data architecture on AWS, collaborating with various teams to deliver high-performance, governed data solutions while establishing best practices and ensuring data quality and security.
Food and BeverageHealth CareHospitalityOrganic Food
Responsibilities
Own the enterprise data architecture vision and roadmap across batch, streaming, ML, and BI workloads on AWS + Databricks
Establish reference architectures, canonical models, and standards for medallion/Lakehouse design (Bronze/Silver/Gold), Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, and data product contracts
Lead design for high throughput ingestion (CDC, streaming, file, API) and domain data products (supply chain, commercial, finance) with SLOs for freshness, quality, and cost
Define governance-by-design: data classification, lineage, access patterns (attribute- and purpose-based), privacy, retention, and audit using Unity Catalog and AWS services
Architect scalable, cost-efficient processing: autoscaling clusters/SQL warehouses, optimized Delta design (Z-Order, OPTIMIZE, clustering), photon-aware pipelines, job orchestration
Drive interoperability with SAP: define patterns for SAP extract/CDC (e.g., ODP, SLT, SDI), model alignment with SAP Business Data Cloud/Datasphere, and harmonized semantics
Design and review near real-time data flows (Spark Structured Streaming, Delta Live Tables, Auto Loader, Kafka/Kinesis/MSK) for operational analytics and event-driven use cases
Champion data quality/observability: great expectations/Deque, Delta expectations, lineage, and SLAs with incident management and FinOps guardrails
Partner with InfoSec to implement platform security: IAM, Lakehouse permissions, token/secret management, private networking, encryption, and data masking tokenization patterns
Collaborate with analytics and data science to productionable features, ML/AI workloads, and vector/semantic search where appropriate, ensuring reproducibility and MLOps readiness
Provides strategic advice on project costs, design concepts, or design changes included risks and assessment of decisions
Communicate project information to senior stakeholders that includes technical reporting and high visibility presentations
Train data engineers in new concepts and AI knowledge
Qualification
Required
Bachelor's degree in computer science, systems analysis, or a related study
10+ years in data architecture, including 5+ years designing at enterprise scale in cloud data platforms
Hands-on expertise with Databricks (Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, SQL Warehouses, Spark, DLT/Workflows, ML Stack) and AWS core services (S3, Glue, Lambda, EMR or MSK/Kinesis, Step Functions, IAM, CloudWatch)
Strong data modeling experience across operational, analytical, and semantic layers: 3NF, data vault, dimensional/star, and data product contract design with tools like Erwin, ER Studio
Proven track record building resilient streaming and batch data pipelines with performance tuning, cost optimization, and observability
Experience with SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP Datasphere) and SAP data integration (ODP/SLT, CDS views, BTP services), or prior SAP BW/ERP data models
Deep understanding of governance, security, and privacy: RBAC/ABAC, PII handling, masking/tokenization, retention, lineage, and access approvals
Presentation skills that include all levels within organization
Excellent stakeholder engagement; ability to convert business outcomes into clear architecture options and trade-offs; strong documentation and standards leadership
Familiarity with ML/AI on Databricks (Feature Store, Model Serving, vector search) and MLOps patterns (CI/CD, model lineage, governance)
Exceptional interpersonal skills in areas such as teamwork, facilitation and negotiation
Good judgment is required for this position as there may be times when direct supervision may not be immediately available
Benefits
Competitive 401k
Flexible PTO
Remote
Health benefits – first of the month following 30 days of employment
Mentorship program/developmental opportunities
Paid Time Off
Sick Time
Paid holidays and parental leave
401K Program
Medical, dental, vision, life, and accidental death/dismemberment insurance
Short-term and long-term disability insurance program
Flexible Spending Account and/or Health Savings Account
Company
UNFI
UNFI is North America’s Premier Food Wholesaler.
10001+ employees
H1B Sponsorship
UNFI has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (6)
2024 (2)
2023 (4)
2022 (4)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$507.1M2024-04-25Post Ipo Debt· $500M
2014-07-15Post Ipo Equity· $7.1M
1996-11-01IPO
Leadership Team
Sandy Douglas
Chief Executive Officer
Giorgio Matteo Tarditi
President and CFO
Recent News
Digital Commerce 360
2025-12-17
San Gabriel Valley Tribune
2025-12-03
Company data provided by crunchbase