Principal Data Architect

Job Title: Principal Data Architect
Washington, DC (Onsite)
11 Months Contract

Job Description
Randstad is seeking a Principal Data Architect to lead the strategic design and technical evolution of the Labor Management Operations ecosystem for a major rail transportation leader in Washington, DC.
As a key technical authority with over 15 years of experience, you will bridge the gap between legacy mainframe environments and modern, near-real-time streaming architectures.
You will be responsible for defining the overall information architecture, ensuring data integrity across a complex portfolio, and setting the enterprise standards for data modeling, API contracts, and security.
This is a high-impact role that combines visionary architectural leadership with deep technical expertise in high-performance database tuning and event-driven systems.

Key Responsibilities
Architectural Leadership: Lead the design and implementation of the technical information architecture for the Labor Management ecosystem, ensuring alignment with enterprise security and performance standards.
Data Modeling: Create and maintain conceptual, logical, and physical data models, including standardized event schemas and API contracts.
Modernization & Integration: Analyze legacy mainframe data systems to inform future-state migrations and develop high-performance pipelines for real-time data transformation and Change Data Capture (CDC).
System Optimization: Perform advanced database programming and query tuning to maintain peak performance and verify data integrity across the portfolio.
Governance & Standards: Establish and implement policies for database management, security, and utilization, contributing directly to the refinement of Enterprise Information Management (EIM) standards.
Mentorship: Provide technical guidance, research new information technologies, and mentor engineering teams on best practices for information design and implementation.

Qualifications
Experience: Minimum of 15+ years of related work experience in Data Management, specifically within Labor and Transportation systems.
Industry Knowledge: Previous experience in the Rail industry is highly preferred.
Technical Mastery: Demonstrated expertise in Information Architecture, Data Modeling, and both Relational and NoSQL technologies.
Modern Stack: Proficiency with streaming technologies (e.g., Kafka, Kafka Schema Registry) and distributed systems architecture.
Legacy Systems: Proven ability to navigate and extract value from legacy environments, including mainframe architectures.
Education: Bachelor s degree in Information Technology or a related field required; Master s degree in Engineering or Computer Science preferred.
Communication: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to present complex technical concepts to diverse stakeholders.