Senior Architect – Data Platforms & Governance / Remote

Role: Senior Architect – Data Platforms & Governance

Location: West Coast (preferred) Remote

 

 

Role Summary
Design and implement a scalable, secure platform for storing, managing, and retrieving biometric images and metadata, and enabling efficient dataset creation for ML model training, including sourcing data from external partners.

 

Key Responsibilities

Architect end-to-end systems for image ingestion, storage, and retrieval

Design metadata schemas and indexing for fast, flexible search

Build scalable solutions for large-volume biometric data (images + metadata)

Develop pipelines for ML dataset curation (filtering, labeling, versioning)

Enable query APIs and dataset extraction workflows for ML teams

Third-Party Data Sourcing & Governance

Define and manage processes for sourcing data from external partners (universities, research labs, vendors)

Collaborate with internal and external legal teams to:

Establish data-sharing agreements and usage rights

Ensure privacy compliance and consent validation

Enforce governance for every data acquisition lifecycle

Implement controls to verify provenance, licensing, and permitted use of all collected data

Security, Privacy & Compliance

Ensure end-to-end protection of biometric data (encryption, access control, auditing)

Embed privacy-by-design principles and regulatory compliance into all workflows

Performance & Scalability

Optimize for high-throughput ingestion and low-latency retrieval

Ensure system reliability at scale (millions/billions of records)

 

Qualifications:

Updated JD:

 

• Client is seeking a Senior Architect level professional.
• The contract is currently structured as a 6-month engagement with a strong likelihood of extension and/or conversion to a full-time employee (FTE) role.

Required Experience

• Strong data architecture and enterprise architecture experience is a key requirement.
• Experience designing and implementing scalable data platforms, data governance frameworks, and overall architectural strategy is important.

Preferred Experience

• Biometrics experience is preferred but not mandatory.
• Candidates without direct biometrics experience may still be considered if they demonstrate substantial experience with:
  • Data architecture
  • Enterprise architecture
  • Large-scale data platforms
  • Data governance and integration initiatives

 

8+ years in data architecture or distributed systems

Familiarity with third-party data acquisition and governance

Knowledge of vector search / similarity search

Cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/Google Cloud Platform)