Senior Data Modeler

Sanford Health is one of the largest and fastest-growing not-for-profit health systems in the United States. We're proud to offer many development and advancement opportunities to our nearly 50,000 members of the Sanford Family who are dedicated to the work of health and healing across our broad footprint.

Work Shift:
8 Hours - Day Shifts (United States of America)

Scheduled Weekly Hours:
40

Salary Range: $40.00 - $66.00Pay starts at $40 and increases according to years of applicable experience.

Union Position:
No

Department Details

Summary
The Senior Data Modeler is responsible for architecting, governing, and advancing the enterprise data modeling framework to ensure data structures support organizational strategy, scalability, and analytic maturity. Provides expert-level leadership across conceptual, logical, and physical modeling and ensures data assets are accurate, consistent, reusable, and aligned with enterprise architecture standards. Champions data modeling best practices, improves enterprise data quality, and shapes the long-term direction of data architecture.

Job Description
The Senior Data Modeler leads collaboration with data architects, data engineers, and business stakeholders to translate complex business rules and analytical requirements into robust conceptual, logical, and physical data models. Designs and governs high-quality data structures using advanced normalization, dimensional modeling, star schema design, and domain-driven design. Produces and maintains detailed Entity-Relationship Diagrams (ERDs) to ensure clarity, consistency, and alignment across data ecosystems.
Provides authoritative oversight and approval for enterprise-wide data models, ensuring compliance with architectural standards, data governance policies, and Technology Solutions (TS) and Architecture COE principles. Will establish, refine, and enforce modeling standards, patterns, and best practices used across the organization to include comprehensive data dictionaries, metadata and data flow documentation. Ensures data models adhere to healthcare security and regulatory requirements (e.g. HIPAA, GDPR, etc.). Design schemas for data lakes and data warehouses (star, snowflake, normalized, denormalized).
Leads cross-functional technical discussions, serving as a mediator and subject matter expert to ensure data modeling needs are accurately understood and implemented. Contributes to the evolution of healthcare-based enterprise data models, ensuring interoperability, scalability, and alignment with organizational goals. Will collaborate closely with principal data architects to influence data architecture decisions and strategic direction.
Strengthens data modeling discipline across applications and business areas, ensuring high-quality data capture and data pipeline alignment. Must anticipate and identify opportunities for optimization, modernization, and innovation in data modeling and propose enhancements to align with industry advancements. Partners with data engineers, data architects and data analysts to resolve integration challenges.
Will mentor and develop data modelers, engineers, and analysts, promoting modeling excellence and knowledge sharing across teams. Responsible for designing, building, and optimizing data models for platforms such as Snowflake, Redshift, and similar cloud-based database systems, ensuring performance, scalability, and architectural integrity.

Qualifications
Bachelor's degree required in computer science, management information systems, or related field.

Minimum of five years of experience in data modeling, database design and development, systems or applications development, or related field. Must be proficient in data modeling tools such as Erwin, ER/Studio, PowerDesigner, or other similar tools. Proficiency with SQL, strong understanding of data pipeline and data warehousing principles and concepts is required.
Strong communication and documentation skills, with the ability to explain complex concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Strong problem-solving skills and attention to detail.

Experience in data modeling and design within the health insurance or health care industry is preferred. Experience with cloud data platforms (e.g., Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud) and healthcare analytics platforms (e.g., Epic Caboodle). Understanding of data lake and lakehouse architectures. Experience with data governance, data quality, and MDM principles. Familiarity with BI/analytics tools and data science needs.

Sanford is an EEO/AA Employer M/F/Disability/Vet.

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