Forrest T. Jones & Company, Inc., and its affiliates (“FTJ”), provide insurance and insurance related services to clients, corporations, employers, and individuals. These services include providing benefits through innovative life and health insurance plans, financial services, and customized insurance products for niche markets.
Position Summary
The Data Architect defines and drives FTJ’s enterprise data strategy and architecture, ensuring data is governed, secure, consistent, and usable across the organization. The role establishes enterprise data standards and provides leadership for data quality, integration, normalization, reporting, analytics, AI readiness, and modernization. A key focus is creating repeatable methods for profiling, mapping, converting, and validating data from acquired books of business while defining the future-state roadmap for FTJ’s enterprise data warehouse and analytics platforms.
Key Responsibilities
- Develop and maintain FTJ’s enterprise data strategy, target architecture, standards, and multiyear modernization roadmap.
- Establish a practical governance framework covering data ownership, stewardship, quality, classification, retention, lineage, access, and usage.
- Define canonical models, business definitions, authoritative systems of record, and normalization standards for critical insurance and corporate data domains.
- Create a repeatable methodology for profiling, mapping, cleansing, converting, validating, and integrating acquired books of business.
- Lead architecture for the future data warehouse and related Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, reporting, analytics, and AI capabilities.
- Define standards for conceptual and logical models, ETL/ELT, APIs, pipelines, metadata, master/reference data, and system integration.
- Establish measurable data-quality controls and partner with business owners to resolve material issues and conflicting definitions.
- Maintain data flow, lineage, integration, and architecture documentation for critical systems and processes.
- Partner with the Enterprise Architect, Principal Software Architect, Azure Architect, DBAs, Security, PMO, application teams, and business leaders; mentor teams and provide oversight for conversions, integrations, application replacements, and modernization initiatives.
- Identify data risks, dependencies, technical debt, privacy, regulatory, audit, retention, and access-control requirements; recommend solutions based on business value, scalability, maintainability, risk, and cost.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in information systems, computer science, data management, or a related field, or equivalent experience; eight or more years of progressive data architecture, data management, or data engineering experience.
- Demonstrated success developing enterprise data strategies, governance practices, architecture roadmaps, and complex data migration, conversion, normalization, or acquisition-integration solutions.
- Strong knowledge of data modeling, quality, integration, warehousing, metadata, master/reference data, relational databases, cloud data platforms, ETL/ELT, APIs, pipelines, security, privacy, retention, and regulatory compliance.
- Ability to translate business needs into actionable architecture and establish accountability across technical and business teams.
Preferred: Insurance or financial-services experience; acquired book-of-business integration; Microsoft SQL Server, Azure data services, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Purview, and Azure Data Factory; DAMA-DMBOK, TOGAF, or relevant Microsoft/DAMA certification.
We offer comprehensive benefits to full-time employees including company-paid medical, STD, LTD and life insurance plus voluntary dental, vision, life/AD&D insurance, 401(k) with company matching, generous paid time off and much more.
We encourage applicants of all ages and experience, as we do not discriminate on the basis of an applicant’s age.
ALL OFFERS OF EMPLOYMENT ARE CONTINGENT UPON THE PASSING OF A DRUG SCREEN AND BACKGROUND CHECK.
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in information systems, computer science, data management, or a related field, or equivalent experience
- Eight or more years of progressive data architecture, data management, or data engineering experience
- Experience developing enterprise data strategies, governance practices, and architecture roadmaps
- Experience with complex data migration, conversion, normalization, or acquisition-integration solutions
- Strong knowledge of data modeling, data quality, data integration, data warehousing, metadata, master/reference data, relational databases, cloud data platforms, ETL/ELT, APIs, pipelines, security, privacy, retention, and regulatory compliance
- Ability to translate business needs into actionable architecture and establish accountability across technical and business teams
- Insurance or financial-services experience
- Experience integrating acquired books of business
- Microsoft SQL Server, Azure data services, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Purview, and Azure Data Factory experience
- DAMA-DMBOK, TOGAF, or relevant Microsoft/DAMA certification
What We Do
Forrest T. Jones & Company (FTJ) is an insurance agency and administrator that was established in 1953 to provide insurance products and other financial services to members of associations and other affinity groups. FTJ currently provides insurance programs to more than 80 national associations and employer groups with more than 1.5 million members. We work with more than 30 of the nation’s leading insurance companies to provide members / employees with access to high quality insurance plans—many with special features and benefits not readily available elsewhere—at favorable group rates. As the flagship of an enterprise that includes two life insurance companies, a reinsurance company, and a FINRA broker/dealer, FTJ offers an exceptional level of strength and flexibility for our association and affinity group clients. Throughout the years, FTJ has worked hand-in-hand with its clients in adding value to member and customer programs through quality insurance products. FTJ has been family owned and managed since its inception, and we pride ourselves on maintaining close, personal relationships with our clients. We strive to meet their needs in a dynamic environment by applying the latest technology, marketing expertise, and our relationships in the insurance industry to attain the best possible insurance plans for their members and support those plans with old-fashioned, high-touch personal service. The company is headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri.
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