Principal Data Architect

Location: This position can be located in the following area(s): Canada - Remote, US - Remote

Company Overview

Robots & Pencils is an applied AI engineering firm building the next frontier of business architecture. We design and ship AI co-workers that integrate into enterprise operations and deliver measurable results for our clients. We're all in on AWS, combining deep UX capability with senior engineering talent to get AI into production fast and keep it there.

We’ve earned the trust of leaders across Consumer Products and Retail, Education, Energy, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Manufacturing and more, and earned a reputation as the nimble alternative to traditional global systems integrators. Founded in 2009, with delivery centers in Canada, the United States, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, we are smaller, faster, and more senior by design. Our teams average 15+ years of experience. We move fast, sweat the details, and build things that actually ship.

Position Overview

We’re looking for a Principal Data Architect who owns the hardest data architecture challenges, sets technical direction across data platforms, and serves as the senior technical voice on how organizations model, move, govern, and trust their data. You set the standard for warehouses, lakes, lakehouse environments, streaming systems, and the data foundations that power AI/ML at scale.

In this role, you will operate as the senior technical authority on data architecture — championing data mesh, data product, and governance strategies, owning high-stakes decisions on platform direction, and shaping the data foundations behind production AI systems. You will partner closely with leadership and clients on data strategy, mentor experienced engineers and architects, and drive a long-term vision for data that is scalable, secure, and built to compound in value over time.

Why This Role Matters

At Robots & Pencils, we design AI systems for a human world. Our name says it all. Robots and pencils means engineering paired with creativity, because every agent we ship has to work for real people in real workflows. That balance is baked into how we operate.

Every role here contributes directly to that mission. Here, you shape how AI systems integrate into enterprise operations, how teams move at real velocity, and how products create measurable impact for clients and the people they serve. We ship production-ready AI in 30 to 45 days. That pace demands people who take ownership, lead with craft, and care deeply about what they put their name on.

What You’ll Do

Craft & Delivery

Set the standard for data architecture across warehouses, data lakes, and lakehouse environments, including medallion architecture and open table format strategy
Design for data and AI governance, including data governance, lineage, quality, cataloging, access control for AI agents, and evaluation data
Define vision and direction for batch and streaming data systems at scale and the orchestration that runs them
Champion enterprise data modeling strategy across dimensional, Data Vault, data mesh, and data product paradigms
Own the architecture of data foundations for AI/ML at scale, including feature stores, embeddings and vector store strategy, and RAG and real-time retrieval data pipelines
Architect semantic layers, knowledge graphs, and unstructured data pipelines (documents, text, images, audio) that give AI agents trusted business context
Drive infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and observability standards that govern how data platforms are built and operated
Champion performance, scalability, cost, and reliability optimization across the data estate
Own security, governance, and compliance posture across data assets (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, SOC2, PII, data residency, and audit readiness)
Stay hands-on: prototype, write production code, and review designs and pull requests alongside delivery teams
Bring an AI-forward mindset to your daily work, using tools like Claude, Cursor, and other modern AI assistants to ship higher-quality work at pace