Responsibilities
Peraton is seeking an experienced Lead Data Architect to join our team of qualified and diverse individuals.
This position supports Peraton's federal customer as part of an application transformation and modernization initiative.
This program is driving a large-scale transformation of systems into a data-centric, cloud-native ecosystem capable of supporting high-volume, near real-time data processing and advanced analytics. The work includes modernization of legacy applications, development of new cloud-native solutions, and implementation of DevSecOps and scaled Agile practices across the organization.
As a Lead Data Architect at Peraton, you will define and drive enterprise data architecture strategy, governance, and implementation across a large-scale federal modernization program.
You will lead architecture efforts spanning data platforms, pipelines, governance frameworks, analytics ecosystems, AI/ML integration, and large-scale distributed processing environments. You will work across multiple systems, teams, vendors, and contractors to ensure data is structured, governed, secured, integrated, and operationalized effectively across the enterprise.
Location: Suitland, MD (Hybrid)
Day to Day Roles and Responsibilities
- Provide technical leadership across enterprise data architecture efforts within a large-scale modernization program
- Design and govern scalable data ecosystems including data lakes, lakehouse architectures, data warehouses, marts, and distributed processing platforms
- Define and implement enterprise data models, schemas, standards, retention strategies, and lifecycle management approaches
- Oversee data management, integration, quality, lineage, storage, retention, and governance processes across systems
- Establish metadata management, data catalogs, data dictionaries, and lineage frameworks supporting governance and traceability requirements
- Design and manage large-scale data ingestion, ETL/ELT pipelines, transformation workflows, analytics, and dissemination capabilities
- Support real-time and streaming architectures using event-driven processing and distributed messaging systems
- Design and oversee APIs, system interconnections, interface management processes, and Interface Control Documents (ICDs)
- Support AI/ML-enabled architectures including ML pipelines, MLOps processes, model deployment, and AI governance frameworks such as the NIST AI RMF
- Collaborate with application architects, engineers, data scientists, SMEs, and external vendors to deliver secure, scalable, and high-performing data solutions
- Ensure compliance with federal data management, privacy, and security requirements including NIST, FedRAMP, Zero Trust, ATO processes, encryption, access control, and data sharing standards
- Lead architecture efforts supporting system-of-systems (SoS) integrations across multiple contractors, vendors, and interdependent platforms
- Implement FinOps and cloud optimization strategies including cost monitoring, tagging, performance tuning, and operational efficiency improvements
- Support operational management of enterprise data platforms including monitoring, maintenance, performance optimization, and lifecycle management (O&M)
- Establish and enforce architecture governance, standards, and best practices across Agile and SAFe delivery teams
- Mentor architects and engineering teams while promoting consistency, governance, and technical excellence