Sr. Data Architect - Digital Director

CLA is a top 10 national professional services firm where our purpose is to create opportunities every day, for our clients, our people, and our communities through industry-focused wealth advisory, digital, audit, tax, consulting, and outsourcing services. Even with more than 8,500 people, 130 U.S. locations, and a global reach, we promise to know you and help you.

CliftonLarsonAllen, LLP (CLA) is seeking an experienced and dynamic Sr. Data Architect – Digital Director.

The Data Architect leads the design and implementation of modern data platforms that enable digital transformation for clients. This role partners with business and technology stakeholders to define data architectures, governance models, and scalable analytics foundations. The Data Architect brings deep expertise in cloud-native data platforms, guides architectural decisions, and contributes to client strategy, delivery excellence, and practice growth.

Essential Job Functions

• Data Architecture & Strategy: Design enterprise and solution-level data architectures aligned to client business goals. Define target-state architectures, migration roadmaps, and reference architectures across analytics, AI/ML, and operational intelligence use cases.
• Platform Engineering & Enablement: Architect, implement, and optimize cloud data platforms using Microsoft Fabric, Azure, Databricks, and related services. Guide ingestion, transformation, orchestration, and semantic modeling patterns.
• Data Governance & Management: Define and implement governance frameworks including metadata management, lineage, data quality, security, and privacy using tools such as Microsoft Purview. Partner with security and compliance teams to ensure regulatory alignment.
• Analytics & AI Enablement: Enable advanced analytics, machine learning, and AI workloads through well-architected lakehouse, warehouse, and real-time data solutions.
• Leadership & Mentorship: Provide architectural leadership across project teams. Mentor engineers and analysts on best practices, patterns, and emerging technologies.
• Client Advisory & Business Development: Serve as a trusted advisor to clients, supporting solution envisioning, proposals, and thought leadership. Contribute to practice development and go-to-market initiatives.

Qualifications

Experience

• 7+ years of relevant experience in data architecture, data engineering, or analytics platform design.  10 Years of experience preferred.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree required; relevant experience may be considered in lieu of degree.
• Preferred fields: Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Data Science, or related disciplines.

Technical Skill Concentrations

• Microsoft Fabric (OneLake, Data Engineering, Data Warehousing, medallion architecture (bronze/silver/gold), Real-Time Analytics)
• Microsoft Azure (Foundry, Copilot Studio, Azure Data Factory, Synapse, Azure SQL, Event Hubs, Functions)
• Microsoft Purview (data catalog, lineage, governance)
• Databricks (Lakehouse architecture, Spark, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog)
• Additional Platforms: Snowflake, AWS (S3, Glue, Redshift), Google Cloud (BigQuery), Kafka, dbt
• Programming & Query Languages: SQL, Python, Scala
• Architecture Concepts: Data modeling, semantic layers, streaming architectures, API integration, CI/CD, infrastructure as code
• Experience preparing analytics environments for AI/ML workloads
• Ability to enable secure data sharing and third-party

Travel Requirements

Less than 10% travel expected.

Our approach to compensation emphasizes collaboration and career growth. We pay competitive wages and view compensation as an investment in our people. Factors such as geography, experience, education, skills, and knowledge may impact position of pay within the range. These same factors may cause starting pay to be below or above the posted range.

Posting Ranges:

• Denver: $140,000 - $200,000
• Minneapolis: $136,000 - $195,000
• Sacramento: $145,000 - $210,000

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Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities

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Wellness at CLA

To support our CLA family members, we focus on their physical, financial, social, and emotional well-being and offer comprehensive benefit options that include health, dental, vision, 401k and much more.

To view a complete list of benefits, click here.