Cencora

Principal Data Architect

Reposted 15 Hours Ago

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Philadelphia PA USA

In-Office

Senior level

Healthtech • Logistics • Pharmaceutical

We are united in our responsibility to create healthier futures

The Role

The Principal Data Architect leads technical and business discussions on architecture direction participates in enterprise strategic development and manages architecture governance while aligning architectural requirements with IT strategy and business goals.

Summary Generated by Built In

Our team members are at the heart of everything we do. At Cencora we are united in our responsibility to create healthier futures and every person here is essential to us being able to deliver on that purpose. If you want to make a difference at the center of health come join our innovative company and help us improve the lives of people and animals everywhere. Apply today!
Job Details
Position Summary
The Principal Data Architect is responsible for designing governing and optimizing the enterprise data architecture that supports analytics operational data needs AI/ML capabilities and strategic business objectives. This role ensures data is structured integrated secured and governed in a way that maximizes usability and value across the organization.
As a key contributor within the Data Analytics & AI Architecture and Strategy Office you will set architecture direction create reusable patterns and canonical models and guide multi‑domain cross‑platform implementations. You will partner with executives product leaders data engineering analytics security and data governance teams to modernize the data ecosystem (e.g. lakehouse data mesh/fabric streaming data products) shorten time‑to‑insight and enable AI/ML at scale. You will own critical architectural artifacts proof‑of‑concepts and reference implementations for mission‑critical initiatives and mentor architects and engineers across the organization.
This role is instrumental in establishing the building blocks of the organization's data ecosystem-data domains data products semantic layers metadata frameworks and data quality controls-while helping evolve the organization toward modern patterns such as data fabric data mesh and cloud‑native lakehouse platforms.
Primary Duties & Responsibilities
Data Architecture & Modeling

Conduct current‑state assessments and define transition architectures to reach the target state with measurable milestones and risk mitigation.
Own conceptual logical and physical data models across enterprise domains.
Establish standards for data modeling canonical data definitions and metadata structures.
Define modeling patterns (e.g. 3NF dimensional/star Data Vault wide tables/Delta semantic/metrics layers) and enforce consistency.
Partner with data engineering to implement data models in modern cloud platforms (e.g. Databricks Snowflake BigQuery).
Ensure lineage metadata and data contracts are designed and documented to support interoperability and governed data sharing.
Ensure consistent reusable and scalable data structures aligned to enterprise data strategy.

Data Platform & Integration Design

Architect data ingestion transformation storage and distribution patterns aligned with platform capabilities.
Define best practices for data architecture across batch micro‑batch and streaming use cases.
Evaluate and recommend data platform technologies for lakehouse data warehouse data lake and operational data stores.
Optimize data storage and processing for performance cost and scalability.
Guide implementation teams on data structures partitioning strategies indexing and schema design.

Data Governance Quality & Security

Partner with governance to operationalize data ownership/stewardship policy enforcement PII/PHI protection and compliance.
Collaborate with governance teams to define data policies data contracts and stewardship models.
Define data quality SLAs/SLOs validation rules trust scores and observability practices (schema drift freshness lineage anomaly detection).
Architect security-by-design (RBAC/PBAC/ABAC column/row‑level security masking encryption key management) across cloud and on‑prem environments.
Integrate governance tooling (e.g. Collibra Purview ) with catalogs lineage and policy management.
Ensure data definitions lineage classifications and business context are documented and visible.

Standards Patterns & Reuse

Publish and maintain architecture patterns blueprints guardrails and decision records (ADRs) to drive consistency and reuse.
Lead design reviews and architecture councils ensuring adherence to standards NFRs (performance reliability security) and cost targets.
Curate a library of data product templates quality checks and integration accelerators.

Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement

Translate complex architectural concepts into clear business narratives and trade‑off analyses for senior stakeholders.
Work with business stakeholders to understand data requirements and translate them into data architecture solutions.
Provide mentoring and coaching to solution/data architects and senior engineers; develop talent and elevate architecture practices.
Influence portfolio planning platform investments and prioritization through architecture insights and value cases.
Present data architecture decisions tradeoffs and recommendations in a clear business‑friendly manner.

Innovation & Emerging Technology

Lead POCs and reference implementations to validate modern patterns (lakehouse mesh/fabric streaming data contracts metrics layers).
Continuously scan market/industry trends and recommend pragmatic adoption plans that reduce complexity and accelerate value.

AI/ML Data Enablement (Supporting Role)

Ensure data structures and pipelines support ML feature engineering training inference and MLOps.
Collaborate with data scientists by providing well‑curated governed high‑quality datasets.
Design data architectures that enable the integration of AI/ML outputs back into operational and analytical systems.

EXPERIENCE AND EDUCATIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science Information Systems Engineering or related field.

Preferred Certifications

CDMP Data Modeling certifications or cloud data certifications (Azure AWS GCP).
TOGAF or related architecture framework experience (desired not required).

Work Experience

9-12 years of experience in data architecture data engineering or data modeling.
5-8 years architecting data structures and data platforms in cloud environments.
Strong experience with conceptual/logical/physical data modeling and data integration.
Demonstrated impact advancing data governance quality and platform modernization.
Demonstrated success designing data solutions for analytics BI or AI/ML.

Skills & Knowledge
Technical Expertise

Data platforms: Databricks (Delta/Lakehouse) Snowflake BigQuery ; object storage (ADLS/S3/GCS).
Integration & orchestration: ADF IICS dbt Airflow; Kafka/event streaming CDC; APIs and pub/sub.
Modeling & semantics: 3NF dimensional/star Data Vault semantic/metrics layers data product modeling data contracts.
Programming & query: SQL Python; performance tuning and cost governance.
BI & analytics: Power BI Tableau Looker; governance of shared semantic models/metrics.
Governance & security: Metadata/catalogs (Collibra/Purview) lineage DQ frameworks RBAC/ABAC masking encryption KMS.
AI/ML enablement: Feature stores MLflow model registries RAG/vector patterns (as enablers not model authorship).

Leadership & Behavioral Skills

Strategic and systems thinking; ability to simplify complex ecosystems.
Executive communication storytelling and influencing without authority.
Mentorship coaching and community of practice leadership.
Bias for outcomes pragmatism and high judgment in trade‑offs.
Growth mindset innovation and continuous learning.

Work Environment
Quiet office environment with computer‑based work and typical mobility. Ability to handle complex situations and competing demands.
What Cencora offers
We provide compensation benefits and resources that enable a highly inclusive culture and support our team members' ability to live with purpose every day. In addition to traditional offerings like medical dental and vision care we also provide a comprehensive suite of benefits that focus on the physical emotional financial and social aspects of wellness. This encompasses support for working families which may include backup dependent care adoption assistance infertility coverage family building support behavioral health solutions paid parental leave and paid caregiver leave. To encourage your personal growth we also offer a variety of training programs professional development resources and opportunities to participate in mentorship programs employee resource groups volunteer activities and much more. For details visit https://www.virtualfairhub.com/cencora
Full time
Equal Employment Opportunity
Cencora is committed to providing equal employment opportunity without regard to race color religion sex sexual orientation gender identity genetic information national origin age disability veteran status or membership in any other class protected by federal state or local law.
The company's continued success depends on the full and effective utilization of qualified individuals. Therefore harassment is prohibited and all matters related to recruiting training compensation benefits promotions and transfers comply with equal opportunity principles and are non-discriminatory.
Cencora is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities during the employment process which are consistent with legal requirements. If you wish to request an accommodation while seeking employment please call 888.692.2272 or email [email protected]. We will make accommodation determinations on a request-by-request basis. Messages and emails regarding anything other than accommodations requests will not be returned
Affiliated Companies
Affiliated Companies: AmerisourceBergen Services Corporation

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The Company

HQ: Conshohocken PA

51000 Employees

Year Founded: 2023

What We Do

Cencora is a leading pharmaceutical solutions organization centered on improving the lives of people and animals everywhere. With 46000+ global team members we have the opportunity to make a positive impact on healthcare in communities everywhere. Our team members are empowered to activate their careers through a collective of tools and resources designed to support individual career interests and aspirations. We value our listening culture that actions real outcomes and our team members appreciate and recognize one another for contributions that are making a meaningful global impact. No matter what your role is here the work we do together has meaning. When you join our team you become a crucial part of a greater purpose. We’re committed to supporting you personally and professionally so we can achieve more together at the center of health.Protect yourself from job scams: Recruitment scams are on the rise. To protect yourself we urge you to be vigilant and follow these guidelines > https://careers.cencora.com/us/en/job-scams