Director of Data Architecture

Summary

Join WRS Health as their hands-on, strategic Director of Data Architecture, leading data platform initiatives on AWS with a focus on healthcare data, data lake strategy, and AI enablement. You will architect and manage scalable, secure, and high-performance data systems supporting traditional analytics and modern ML workloads. Responsibilities include defining and implementing an enterprise-wide data architecture strategy, leading the evolution of the AWS-based data lake architecture, and optimizing data storage and retrieval. You will also collaborate with data science teams on embedding models and vectorization, ensure data security and compliance, and build and lead a high-performing team. This is a full-time, remote independent contractor position requiring availability during standard US business hours.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science, Data Engineering, or related field
• 8–12+ years of experience in data architecture with 3–5 years in a technical leadership role
• Proven experience architecting AWS-based data lakes and analytics pipelines
• Deep understanding of healthcare data standards (FHIR, HL7) and working with FHIR JSON objects in large-scale systems
• Expertise with embedding and vectorization models, semantic search, and managing vector storage solutions
• Hands-on experience with Amazon S3, Mountpoint for S3, and optimizing S3-based workloads for performance and cost
• Strong background in data security, encryption, access control, and compliance frameworks (HIPAA, HITRUST)

Responsibilities

• Define and implement an enterprise-wide data architecture strategy that supports interoperability, AI /ML readiness, and regulatory compliance
• Lead the evolution of our AWS-based data lake architecture, supporting structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data types—especially FHIR-formatted JSON healthcare data
• Design and maintain scalable, secure, and cost-effective data lakes using Amazon S3, AWS Glue, Athena, Redshift, and Lake Formation
• Leverage Mountpoint for S3 to enable high-performance, POSIX-compliant access to S3 objects, including vectorized data files
• Optimize data storage and retrieval strategies for performance and cost-efficiency, including partitioning, file formats (e.g., Parquet, ORC), and compression techniques
• Collaborate with data science teams to implement embedding models, vectorization pipelines, and real-time inference architectures
• Design and manage vector storage systems (e.g., S3-based, FAISS, Pinecone, or Amazon OpenSearch) to support semantic search, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and intelligent data access
• Ensure vectorized data pipelines are aligned with model training, evaluation, and deployment strategies
• Architect systems to ingest, process, and store FHIR-compliant JSON data from EHRs, APIs, and HL7 sources
• Ensure conformance with healthcare interoperability standards and optimize for queryability and downstream analytics
• Implement data normalization and enrichment pipelines for use in both clinical and operational contexts
• Lead efforts to ensure data security at rest and in transit using AWS-native encryption, IAM, VPC controls, and bucket policies
• Implement and manage data access controls, audit logging, and role-based security models across AWS environments
• Oversee data governance including lineage, cataloging, and stewardship with tools such as AWS Glue Data Catalog, Lake Formation, or third-party platforms
• Build and lead a high-performing team of data architects and engineers
• Work closely with stakeholders from engineering, data science, product, and compliance teams to deliver data initiatives
• Promote data literacy and foster a culture of innovation and continuous improvement

Preferred Qualifications

• AWS certifications (e.g., AWS Certified Big Data or Data Analytics – Specialty)
• Familiarity with open-source vector databases (e.g., FAISS, Weaviate) and MLOps pipelines
• Experience in clinical systems integration, claims processing, or population health analytics

Benefits

• Remote work
• Full-time