Senior Data Architect

Key Responsibilities

• Provide strategic architectural leadership for the Data and AI landscape, taking an end-to-end view across business, data, technology, analytics and AI solutions.
• Define and drive the target architecture and long-term technology direction for the Data and AI, ensuring scalability, integration, reuse and sustainable growth.
• Shape effective use of our modern data platform based on Azure and Databricks, enabling trusted, governed and reusable data to support Data Products, analytics and AI solutions.
• Establish architectural principles and ensure alignment with Volvo Group Data Model, Volvo Enterprise Reference Architecture, enterprise standards and security requirements, while translating them into pragmatic solutions for the Volvo environment.
• Identify and manage cross-domain dependencies, architectural risks and opportunities, ensuring consistency and coherence across Data and AI ecosystems.
• Act as a trusted strategic advisor to senior business and technology stakeholders, influencing decisions and challenging existing approaches where needed.
• Translate complex business needs into clear, scalable and implementable architectural strategies, balancing innovation with governance, security, cost and technical feasibility.
• Lead and orchestrate collaboration between business stakeholders, Data Product teams, architects, engineers and external partners, creating alignment across multiple initiatives.
• Drive architectural maturity and continuous improvement by establishing common standards, reusable patterns, and ways of working that enable the organization to scale its Data and AI capabilities.

Technical Skills & Experience

• Proven experience as a Data Architect or in a similar senior architecture role.
• Strong expertise in data architecture, data modeling and data platform design, including dimensional modeling (Kimball, star schema), medallion architecture, ETL processing, Data Products, data governance, integration patterns, analytics architectures, and modern Data & AI architecture patterns for batch and streaming data processing.
• Experience designing and implementing scalable data solutions supporting analytics, reporting (Power BI), and AI use cases.
• Strong expertise in Azure Databricks and Azure data platforms, including platform setup and management (subscriptions, resource groups, Azure Storage), Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, PySpark, compute clusters, orchestration, Databricks Genie, GitHub Copilot AI-assisted development, and access management.
• Strong knowledge of Azure data and integration services, including Azure Data Factory, Azure Storage, Event Hubs, Azure Functions, and related Azure platform services.
• Understanding security, identity, and secrets management for data platforms, including Entra ID users and groups, Managed Identities, Service Principals, OAuth 2.0, Single Sign-On (SSO), Azure Key Vault, and secrets management.
• Proficiency in SQL and a good understanding of Python and Apache Spark.
• Experience working in complex enterprise environments with multiple stakeholders and delivery teams.

What Will Help You Succeed

• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to connect business strategy, data, analytics and AI into a coherent architectural vision.
• Comfortable working in a fast-changing environment and shaping new ways of working.
• Ability to influence decisions and drive alignment without direct authority.
• Curious, open-minded and willing to explore unfamiliar domains and technologies.
• Collaborative mindset with the ability to bring together business stakeholders, architects, engineers and Data Product teams around common goals.