Data Architect

Date Posted: 05/06/2025
Req ID: 42811
Faculty/Division: Operations and Real Estate Partnerships
Department: Institutional Research and Data Governance
Campus: St. George (Downtown Toronto)
Position Number: 00057936

Description:

About us:

The University’s Institutional Research and Data Governance (IRDG) office provides leadership and administrative support for the institution’s data strategy. The IRDG office’s mandate is to:

• Provide reporting and analytics services within our distributed institutional research model: lead institution-wide analysis projects, provide training opportunities for divisional analysts, implement new analytics tools and platforms, and improve access to curated institutional datasets.
• Support external reporting of institutional data (SMA metrics, key performance indicators for governance, international rankings, data exchanges with peer institutions).
• Implement an institution-wide data governance program to support the University in strategically harnessing data to achieve institutional goals.
• Provide leadership and administrative support for the institution’s data strategy.

Your opportunity:

Under the direct supervision of the Manager of Data Engineering and Business Intelligence, the incumbent will work closely with team members, Central IT, and a wide range of stakeholder groups. This role will play a key part in shaping and executing an ongoing data roadmap that anticipates future growth, strengthens the University’s data security posture, enhances data assets, and elevates the strategic profile of IRDG and the broader institution. The Data Architect will lead data-related initiatives, design scalable technology solutions, and establish improve data architecture and usability. Key responsibilities will also include designing efficient and maintainable data models, cleaning and optimizing existing data structures, architecting end-to-end data solutions, cataloguing data assets, and implementing governance practices to ensure consistency, accessibility, and long-term value.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Providing data architectural direction and oversight to develop a holistic view of data strategy, data processes, and data assets across the unit.
• Lead initiatives for data classification, archiving, and access control to ensure data security, compliance,and efficient lifecycle management across the enterprise data warehouse.
• Drive the cleanup and organization of the existing data warehouse by refining tables, views, and processes to improve system performance, data quality, and operational efficiency.
• Architecting a robust, scalable, secure, and sustainable framework to maximize integration opportunities across all different platforms to promote data accuracy, integrity, and security.
• Developing and sustaining Enterprise data governance policies, and standards to ensure data access, accuracy, flow, traceability, classification, compliance, consistency, retention, storage, integrity, and security are promoted throughout all data platforms.
• Creating, designing, reviewing, transforming, deploying, and developing data models and data roadmaps to meet current and the future needs of the unit.
• Act as a technical lead by leading and planning IT projects including defining requirements and scope of complex projects with broad impact and long-term consequences.
• Advising, advocating, and working with stakeholders to ensure selected technology solutions are sustainable, efficient, and effective for the unit and the University of Toronto.
• Adhering to best practices on data warehousing principles, ensuring naming conventions and data field types are governed and maintaining all the data models and advising on data structure designs.
• Reconciling business requirements with information architecture needs for highly complex system integration.
   

Essential Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree or acceptable combination of equivalent experience.
• Eight years of experience or more in a data architecture or other data architecture related roles.
• Experience working with on premises and Cloud solutions.
• Experience in data modelling and query performance tuning on SQL Server, MySQL, and Azure platforms.
• Experience working with large and complex data sets, as well as, experiencing analyzing volumes of data.
• Experience in the creation of physical and logical data modelling and administration of databases.
• Experience with system management, performance monitoring, data security, backup, mirroring, replication, change management, high availability, and disaster recover solutions.
• Experience leading IT projects, including defining requirements and scope of complex projects and conducting project costing, scheduling and resourcing.
• Experience with Data Lakes, Data Analytics, Predictive Analytics, data transformation frameworks, database refactoring/re-engineering.
• Expert data modelling and database design skills (both dimensional and relational).
• Advance knowledge and experience working with database design, maintenance and operations on various platforms, application security, and disaster recovery.
• Exceptional analytical skills, showing fluency in the use of tools such as MS SQL, MySQL, and strong ETL language SQL programming skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communications skills at both a technical and business level, able to build and foster positive relationships with highly dispersed and dynamic teams.
• Experience with access management and archiving data.

Assets (Nonessential):

• Experience with Azure Data Factory.
• Experience with Power Platform and integration with enterprise grade database for reporting.
• Knowledge of MS Fabric features, particularly OneLake.

To be successful in this role you will be:

• Communicator
• Diplomatic
• Intuitive
• Multi-tasker
• Organized
• Problem solver

Closing Date: 05/23/2025, 11:59PM ET
Employee Group: USW 
Appointment Type: Budget - Continuing 
Schedule: Full-Time
Pay Scale Group & Hiring Zone:  
USW Pay Band 18 -- $114,486. with an annual step progression to a maximum of $146,408. Pay scale and job class assignment is subject to determination pursuant to the Job Evaluation/Pay Equity Maintenance Protocol. 
Job Category: Engineering / Technical

Lived Experience Statement
Candidates who are members of Indigenous, Black, racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ communities, persons with disabilities, and other equity deserving groups are encouraged to apply, and their lived experience shall be taken into consideration as applicable to the posted position.