Senior Solutions Architect

About the role

As a Senior Solutions Architect on the Delivery Architecture team at Astronomer, you will serve as the senior technical leader for customer engagements within the company's Services Delivery team. Your primary responsibility will be to work closely with clients, project managers, and engineering teams to operationalize Airflow and Astro at scale, ensuring that data orchestration platforms are designed, implemented, and optimized effectively. This role combines solution architecture with practical technical work, including building prototypes to validate designs and providing strategic guidance on platform deployment and modernization. You will interact directly with engineers, architects, and executive stakeholders to craft scalable, secure, and reliable data solutions that meet enterprise needs. Your expertise will help clients Astro's industry-leading DataOps platform powered by Apache Airflow to unlock insights, accelerate AI initiatives, and build data-driven applications. The position offers a unique opportunity to work on complex architecture problems for some of the world's largest organizations, contributing to the evolution of their data infrastructure.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Lead architecture reviews, technical workshops, and design sessions with engineering teams and executive stakeholders to define platform requirements and solutions.
• Design comprehensive end-to-end platform architectures that integrate Airflow with various cloud infrastructures, compute frameworks, and data platforms, ensuring they are scalable, secure, and maintainable.
• Review delivery work to ensure it adheres to high standards for scalability, observability, security, and operational excellence, providing guidance and feedback to engineering teams.
• Diagnose and troubleshoot technical issues during deployment, migration, and platform modernization projects, guiding customers through resolving complex problems.
• Build reusable tools, frameworks, reference architectures, and best practices that improve the quality and consistency of delivery across customer projects.
• Collaborate with clients to understand their business objectives and translate these into technical architectures that are scalable and production-ready.
• Support customers in optimizing their data workflows, ensuring platform performance, reliability, and security.
• Assist in designing and implementing data quality checks, monitoring, and alerting systems within the data platform.
• Stay current with industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices in data engineering, cloud architecture, and DataOps to continuously improve solutions.
• Contribute to internal documentation, knowledge sharing, and training to elevate team capabilities and ensure best practices are followed.
• Participate in pre-sales activities, including technical presentations and proof-of-concept demonstrations, to showcase Astronomer's platform capabilities.
• Engage in occasional travel for customer on-site engagements, conferences, or team meetings, as needed.
• Provide mentorship and guidance to junior team members and contribute to the development of internal standards and processes.
• Work closely with product teams to communicate customer feedback and influence future platform enhancements.
• Ensure compliance with security standards and, where applicable, ITAR regulations, to meet enterprise security requirements.

Requirements

• A minimum of 8 years of experience in data engineering, platform engineering, or solution architecture, with a proven track record of designing and deploying complex data solutions.
• Extensive experience with authoring, deploying, and managing Airflow DAGs in production environments, including monitoring execution and troubleshooting failures.
• Strong understanding of Airflow performance tuning, DAG refactoring, infrastructure sizing, and implementing data quality checks and alerts.
• Demonstrated success in guiding customers through platform deployments, migrations, or technical transformations, managing scope, timelines, and stakeholder expectations.
• Deep knowledge of designing cloud-native data platforms on AWS, Azure, or GCP, including familiarity with enterprise networking, security, and identity management patterns.
• Programming proficiency in Python and SQL, with the ability to develop and troubleshoot complex data workflows.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Docker, and Kubernetes to automate deployment and manage containerized environments.
• Familiarity with data platforms such as Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, or Redshift, and experience integrating these with Airflow.
• Strong communication skills, capable of translating business requirements into scalable technical architectures.
• Proven ability to lead architecture discussions and make informed technical decisions with engineering teams and executive stakeholders.
• Ability to produce clear documentation and technical specifications that facilitate implementation and knowledge transfer.
• Experience working with enterprise clients on large-scale data projects, demonstrating a customer-focused approach.
• Knowledge of security best practices in cloud environments and experience with compliance standards.
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a fast-paced environment, managing multiple priorities effectively.

Nice to have

• Prior experience working with Apache Airflow in production environments, including complex orchestration scenarios.
• Knowledge of AI and data analytics integration within data platforms.
• Familiarity with security best practices and compliance standards such as ITAR.
• Experience working with enterprise clients on large-scale data projects involving multiple stakeholders.
• Background in solutions, engineering, or platform architecture, with a focus on scalable and secure data solutions.
• Understanding of enterprise networking, identity management, and security protocols in cloud environments.

Skills & tools

• Python
• AWS, Azure, GCP
• Docker
• Kubernetes
• CI/CD pipelines
• Infrastructure as Code
• Apache Airflow
• Data Engineering
• SQL
• Snowflake
• BigQuery
• dbt
• Data platforms such as Databricks, Redshift
• Security best practices in cloud environments

Practical notes

• Customer engagements are primarily on-site in San Francisco, with occasional travel for conferences and team on-site meetings.
• The role involves a mix of solution design, technical leadership, and hands-on implementation, requiring a strong technical background and customer-facing skills.
• The estimated salary range for this position is $190,000 to $250,000, depending on experience and qualifications, complemented by an equity component and comprehensive benefits package.
• The position requires a solid understanding of cloud data platforms, security, and enterprise architecture to support large organizations effectively.
• Candidates should be prepared to work closely with clients to understand their unique needs and deliver tailored, scalable solutions.
• The role offers an excellent opportunity to influence the future of DataOps and data platform architecture at some of the world's leading enterprises.
• Candidates must be comfortable working in a fast-paced environment that values innovation, technical excellence, and customer success.
• The position emphasizes collaboration with cross-functional teams, including product, engineering, and customer success, to deliver impactful solutions.
• The company values diversity and is an equal opportunity employer, committed to fostering an inclusive environment free from discrimination based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability.

About the company

Astronomer empowers data teams to bring mission-critical software, analytics, and AI to life and is the company behind Astro, the industry-leading unified DataOps platform powered by Apache Airflow®. Astro accelerates building reliable data products that unlock insights, unleash AI value, and powers data-driven applications.