Data Architect

Data Architect

Department: Engineering / Data Location: Accra / Hybrid Employment type: Full-time

About the Role

We are looking for an experienced Data Architect to design, build, and govern the data foundations that power our products and decision-making. You will own the end-to-end data architecture, from how data is ingested and stored to how it is modeled, secured, and served to analytics, applications, and machine-learning teams. This is a hands-on, high-impact role for someone who can balance long-term architectural vision with practical delivery.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and maintain the organization's overall data architecture, including data warehouses, data lakes, and operational data stores.
• Define data models (conceptual, logical, and physical) and set standards for schema design, naming conventions, and documentation.
• Build and optimize data pipelines and integration flows across source systems, ensuring reliability, scalability, and performance.
• Establish and enforce data governance, quality, lineage, and master data management practices.
• Define and implement data security, privacy, and compliance controls (e.g., access management, encryption, regulatory requirements).
• Select and evaluate data technologies, tools, and platforms, and produce clear recommendations for build-vs-buy decisions.
• Partner with software engineers, analysts, and data scientists to translate business requirements into robust data solutions.
• Create and maintain architecture documentation, standards, and reference designs that guide engineering teams.
• Monitor system performance and lead capacity planning, cost optimization, and continuous improvement of the data platform.
• Mentor engineers and analysts on data modeling and architecture best practices.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).
• 5+ years of experience in data engineering, database development, or data architecture, including 2+ years in an architect or lead role.
• Strong command of SQL and data modeling techniques (relational, dimensional/star-schema, and data-vault approaches).
• Hands-on experience with modern data warehouse and lake platforms (e.g., Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks).
• Experience designing and operating ETL/ELT pipelines using tools such as dbt, Airflow, or similar.
• Working knowledge of at least one cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and its core data services.
• Solid understanding of data governance, security, and compliance principles.