We are seeking a highly experienced, technically strong, and delivery‑driven Onsite Lead / Principal Architect to lead our Data Infrastructure Platforms function. This role owns the architecture, execution, and operational excellence of cloud-based data platform capabilities—including provisioning and automation, platform reliability, governance enablement, and secure scalable delivery.
You will act as the primary onsite leader partnering with the Cloud Platforms Head, coordinating with Offshore teams, and collaborating with internal platform consumers such as Analytics Platform teams and Data Governance. The ideal candidate blends deep hands-on platform architecture with strong Agile execution and stakeholder leadership.
Key Responsibilities
1) Leadership & Agile Delivery Ownership
- Serve as the onsite leader for the Data Infrastructure Platforms engineering team, ensuring high-quality and predictable delivery across initiatives.
- Own day-to-day execution: sprint planning, backlog refinement, grooming, reviews/demos, retrospectives, and release readiness.
- Manage and streamline intake, prioritization, and execution using Aha! and Jira.
- Partner with Offshore team leads for global execution.
- Proactively manage risks, dependencies, and cross-team impacts.
- Establish delivery metrics and continuously improve team performance.
2) Platform Architecture & Technical Leadership
- Provide architectural leadership for enterprise cloud data infrastructure and platform services.
- Design scalable, secure, cost-efficient reference architectures for ingestion, ELT/ETL, orchestration, and Lakehouse patterns.
- Review and approve solution designs ensuring alignment with architecture, security, and operational standards.
- Drive engineering excellence across CI/CD, observability, automation.
3) Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) & GitOps Delivery (Argo CD)
- Own infrastructure provisioning using Terraform.
- Establish Terraform best practices: modularization, versioning, state management.
- Lead GitOps-based Kubernetes deployments using Argo CD.
- Oversee updates to Kubernetes workloads through Argo CD workflows.
4) Databricks Architecture, Governance & Security Enablement
- Own architecture and lifecycle management for Databricks on AWS.
- Drive governance with Unity Catalog and integrations with metadata platforms.
- Define best practices for notebooks, pipelines, security, Delta Lake workflows.
5) Stakeholder Management & Cross-Team Collaboration
- Serve as the onsite contact for Analytics Platforms and Data Governance.
- Manage intake, prioritization, solution shaping, estimation, and expectation alignment.
- Communicate platform strategy, standards, and decisions clearly.
6) Operational Excellence & Reliability
- Own operational health: incidents, RCA, SLAs/SLOs.
- Drive observability, cost optimization, and compliance.
- Maintain documentation: architecture diagrams, SOPs, playbooks.
Requirements
- 15+ years in cloud platforms, data engineering, or enterprise architecture.
- Strong AWS experience (Redshift, Glue, Athena, MWAA, EKS).
- Experience with Databricks, DBT, Fivetran.
- Strong Terraform and Argo CD expertise.
- Proven global team leadership.
- Strong Agile delivery experience.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with governance/catalog tools (Atlan, Collibra, Alation).
- AWS certifications.
- Experience with CI/CD, policy enforcement.
- Exposure to analytics platforms (Posit, Tableau, Spotfire, UBI).
Personal Attributes
- Strong ownership mindset.
- Balances architecture and execution.
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
- Calm under pressure and improvement‑oriented
Benefits
About Zifo:
CURIOSITY DRIVEN, SCIENCE FOCUSED, EMPLOYEE BUILT. Our culture is unlike any other, one where we debate, challenge ourselves, and interact with all alike. We are a curious bunch, characterized by our passion to learn and spirit of teamwork. Zifo is a global R&D solutions provider focused on the industries of Pharma, Biotech, Manufacturing QC, Medical Devices, specialty chemicals and other research-based organizations. Our team’s knowledge of science and expertise in technology help Zifo better serve our customers around the globe, including 18 of the Top 20 Biopharma companies.
We look for Science – Biotechnology, Pharmaceutical Technology, Biomedical Engineering, Microbiology etc. We possess scientific and technical knowledge and bear professional and personal goals. While we have a “no doors” policy to promote free access within, we do have a tough door to walk in. We search with a two-point agenda – technical competency and cultural adaptability.
We offer a competitive compensation package including accrued vacation, medical, dental, vision, 401k with company matching, life insurance, and flexible spending accounts.
If you share these sentiments and are prepared for the atypical, then Zifo is your calling!
Zifo is an equal opportunity employer, and we value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
Top Skills
What We Do
Did you know that the saying ‘Curiosity killed the cat’ actually ends with ‘but satisfaction brought it back’? We suspect that the shortened version is the doing of grown-ups suppressing the innately curious child inside them!
For us at Zifo, we take curiosity as unbounded - it is a celebrated value. Curiosity does wonderful things - drive exploration, accelerate learning, inspire better solutions, lead to innovation, drive conversations. We believe that the scientific community’s most important duty to the world is to stay curious. And this is what we do at Zifo.
We have a global presence of over 1000 employees spread across our offices in US, UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, China, Canada, Singapore & India.
We offer services in areas such as Scientific Informatics, Lab Informatics, Clinical Biometrics, Regulatory Compliance including Computer System Validation and Genome Informatics across 20+ countries. Our customers include 7 of the Top 10 global Bio-pharma companies.
We are listed as 'Technology Fast 50' by Deloitte for 9 consecutive years (2012-2020) and as one of the 'Best Places to Work' for the past five years.
We strive to stay curious, day in and day out. Asking the right questions, and listening to provide the right solutions.
Write to us at [email protected].
