Data Architect

Summary

Join the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as a Data Architect! This full-time position, based in New York, NY, Washington, DC, San Francisco, CA, or Durham, NC, or remotely in the US, offers the chance to design and implement scalable data architecture solutions. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams, ensuring data privacy and security while supporting the ACLU's mission. Responsibilities include building data models, optimizing data flows, ensuring privacy compliance, and contributing to data governance. The ideal candidate possesses significant experience in data architecture, strong SQL skills, and familiarity with cloud-based data platforms. This position is part of a collective bargaining unit represented by ACLU Staff United (ASU). The ACLU offers a competitive salary and a comprehensive benefits package.

Requirements

• Significant professional experience as a data architect or in a similar role, working on large-scale data management solutions and constituent data
• Proven track record of developing and implementing data strategies and tactical solutions that support organizational goals and business processes
• Capacity to manage large, complex projects and lead others
• Deep experience with SQL databases, familiarity with cloud-based data platforms like Redshift or similar cloud data warehouse solutions, such as Snowflake, Azure Data Warehouse, or BigQuery
• Strong understanding of data architecture concepts, including MDM, enterprise architecture standards, data curation, ETL/ELT, data pipelines, and data security best practices
• Ability to work collaboratively with a cross-functional team of peers and stakeholders, navigating complex decision-making in a rapidly changing environment
• Comfortable with diving into technical work required in modern data practices, such as exploring API driven architectures, discovering limitations, learning independently, and sharing your learnings with others
• Strong problem-solving mindset as it will be critical to navigate complex data structures and environments to solve data integration and data quality issues
• Excellent thought leadership, alignment-building, and communication skills

Responsibilities

• Build, optimize, and maintain conceptual and logical data models and database architecture in support of operational and data analytics systems
• Partner with technical and non-technical stakeholders understand, document, and optimize data flows across the ACLU's ecosystem
• Architect and help build a consent management data model and data flows to ensure the ACLU is compliant with privacy legislation and constituent preferences
• Play a key role in the migration of our primary fundraising CRM, helping architect future state together with analytics and fundraising stakeholders
• Work with business leaders across the organization to understand, document, and deliver on compliance, performance, and security requirements; help define and execute on an organizational data governance strategy
• Sit on our operational data engineering team and partner with our analytics/platform engineering teams to ensure data engineering consistency across the technology team
• Partner with privacy engineering to ensure data retention, deletion and access requests are compliant and performant
• Improve overall data reliability, quality, accessibility, and security; anticipate potential issues and propose right-sized solutions
• Write clear, detailed, concise documentation, including architecture diagrams, reference architecture, data flows, data models, design, and implementation plans for both technical and business audiences
• Grow the team's technical expertise through mentorship and provide technical guidance
• Help build a culture of growth and learning. Stay ahead of industry trends to propose innovative solutions that improve organizational data capabilities
• "Tag in" to perform data engineering tasks when appropriate; work in Python, SQL, dbt, Dagster
• Engage in special projects and other duties as assigned

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience implementing privacy compliance products and/or consent management
• Experience implementing master data management solutions
• Some familiarity with BI tools like Tableau and machine learning frameworks
• Some familiarity with recent privacy regulations (CCPA, etc.) and standards

Benefits

• Time away to focus on the things that matter with a generous paid time-off policy
• Focus on your well-being with comprehensive healthcare benefits (including medical, dental and vision coverage, parental leave, gender affirming care & fertility treatment)
• Plan for your retirement with 401k plan and employer match
• We support employee growth and development through annual professional development funds, internal professional development programs and workshops