Consulting Senior Data Architect (Microsoft Fabric Focus)

Job Description PLEASE NOTE: It is a 100% Remote position in Canada. Candidates Preferred from EST/CST Time Zone. JOB SUMMARY: We are seeking a Consulting Senior Data Architect with deep, production-grade Microsoft Fabric experience to accelerate our active rollout of Fabric for customer-facing and revenue-impacting digital products hosted in Azure. This is a hands-on role responsible for designing and building Fabric artifacts (pipelines, lakehouses, eventstream/real-time patterns), defining data architecture standards (conceptual/logical/physical), and implementing governance and security guardrails that scale across multiple product teams. Key Responsibilities: Microsoft Fabric Enablement (Hands-on Delivery + Standardization) Architect and implement Fabric solutions for data engineering (Spark), Data Factory pipelines , and real-time analytics / Event streams aligned to digital product needs. Build and standardize Fabric patterns for ingestion, transformation, and serving across workloads including operational analytics, near-real-time, batch, and data science/ML. Create repeatable reference implementations for common digital product scenarios (IoT telemetry, time series, transactional + event fusion, documents, geospatial). Unified Data Platform Architecture (Target State + Roadmap) Produce and maintain the target-state architecture for Fabric-based data platform capabilities. Define domain-oriented data product patterns including how shared/enterprise datasets are curated and reused. Establish architectural boundaries and integration guidance for shared datasets vs. product-owned datasets. Data Modeling Standards (Conceptual / Logical / Physical) Define and enforce data modeling standards and templates appropriate to Fabric Lakehouse/Warehouse patterns and product analytics needs. Provide modeling guidance for high-variance data types (telemetry, geospatial, documents) and hybrid operational-analytics use cases. Define standards for schema evolution, versioning, and contract-first data interfaces (where applicable). Governance, Security, and Compliance by Design Design and implement a governance model covering classification, retention, lineage, and auditability. Ensure compliance guardrails are built into delivery patterns and operational processes to meet GDPR, ISO 27001, and data residency requirements. Define and enforce Fabric access controls using Entra ID, RBAC, and workspace-level controls (including guidance for separation of duties and least privilege). CI/CD + Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for Fabric Define and implement a CI/CD approach for Fabric artifacts as the enterprise source of truth. Establish release patterns for Fabric changes (promotion strategy, environment separation, approvals, and quality gates) aligned to platform standards. Manage Fabric-related platform configuration using Terraform as the IaC approach (including reusable modules/patterns). Create golden path templates and guidance that product teams can adopt with minimal friction. Capacity Planning, Cost Model, and Chargeback/Show back Design Fabric capacity strategy (SKU sizing, workload isolation, scaling model) to support multiple products reliably. Define guardrails and operational practices that reduce waste and improve predictability. Reliability, Observability, and Operational Readiness Define reliability patterns and operational standards for data pipelines and real-time workloads. Integrate logging/monitoring with Log Analytics and security monitoring with Sentinel, including alerting and incident response considerations. Define and operationalize data quality SLAs (freshness, completeness, accuracy, timeliness) and embed quality checks into delivery pipelines. Consulting Engagement + Governance Forums Participate in architectural governance and provide architecture review/sign-off, with authority to mandate standards when necessary to protect platform integrity Partner closely with platform engineering to align patterns across identity, network, DevOps, and security. Working Style & Mindset Hands-on architect: you can design and build the critical Fabric artifacts to prove patterns. Platform-oriented: you think in reusable standards, templates, and repeatable governance. Strong consultative presence: you can advise product teams while also driving decisions and outcomes. Comfortable with authority: you can mandate standards when required to protect the platform and business. Documentation discipline: you produce clear ADRs, standards, and operating playbooks. Engagement & Collaboration Supports product teams through office hours and project-based sprints. Works primarily with: Azure lead architect, security architect/engineer, DevOps platform engineer, and product engineering teams. Data ownership remains with product teams; this role defines the how (standards/patterns/governance), not centralized ownership. Requirements Required Deliverables: You will be accountable for producing the following: Target-state architecture Data model standards: conceptual / logical / physical + templates Domain-oriented data product patterns and operating guidance Governance model: classification, retention, lineage, access controls Fabric workspace strategy + operating model (environments, isolation, ownership, lifecycle) CI/CD approach for Fabric artifacts integrated with platform guardrails IaC approach using Terraform for Fabric-related configuration and Cost model + capacity planning strategy (SKU sizing, isolation, show back/chargeback) Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) for key platform decisions Qualifications: Required Experience & Skills 10+ years in data architecture/data engineering roles, including platform-scale design. Proven Microsoft Fabric production implementations you have delivered Fabric solutions that run in production with real operational constraints. Deep hands-on expertise in Fabric areas central to our rollout: Data Engineering Data Factory (pipelines) Real-time analytics / Event Streams Strong architecture capability across mixed data types: transactional, telemetry/events, documents, geospatial, time series. Demonstrated experience implementing and governing: Data modeling standards (conceptual/logical/physical) Data governance (classification, retention, lineage) Security patterns using Entra ID , RBAC, workspace-level controls Compliance guardrails for GDPR, ISO 27001, and data residency Strong DevOps fluency: CI/CD patterns and operational delivery Terraform as mandatory IaC for repeatability and standardization Ability to define standards and enforce guardrails while maintaining a delivery-first, pragmatic approach. Preferred Experience supporting IoT and telemetry-heavy product ecosystems. Experience designing data quality frameworks and SLAs for operational analytics and near-real-time processing. Familiarity integrating observability/security signals into Log Analytics and Sentinel. Education/Work Experience 10+ years in data architecture/data engineering roles, including platform-scale design.