Location: Calgary, Alberta
Employment Type: Full Time – Permanent
Salary Range: SP4, Level 6. The final compensation for this position will be determined based on individual factors, including education, qualifications, experience, and internal equity.
Senior Data Architect - Hybrid
The Opportunity
The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) is seeking a Senior Data Architect to join the Information Management & Technology branch. This role is responsible for guiding data architecture during regulatory platform development and analytics integration. It includes managing data modeling and database design, so they match business requirements, APIs, and Entity Framework models by applying modern database-as-code approaches.
The role involves ensuring regulatory system data feeds into the bronze and silver layers of the Databricks-based Lakehouse. The Senior Data Architect works with both transactional and analytical systems to support downstream consumption, governance, lineage, consistency, and enterprise integration.
The Senior Data Architect collaborates with Product Owners, Solution Architects, Enterprise Data Modelling, and Data Engineering teams to turn business and regulatory needs into secure, scalable, and maintainable data solutions that meet enterprise standards and support long-term architectural goals.
This senior architectural role focuses on data modelling, architecture and engineering, and technical leadership. The candidate will guide teams and promote modernization and consistency across platforms.
What your day-to-day will look like:
Lead data architecture and data modelling efforts for regulatory platform solutions, collaborating with Product Owners, Solution Architects, and delivery teams to design scalable, secure, and high-performing systems aligned with enterprise standards and business objectives.
Translate business and system requirements into conceptual, logical, and physical data models supporting transactional, integration, and analytical workloads.
Collaborate with the Enterprise Data Modeller to align platform data models with enterprise business information models and oversee physical data model implementation.
Define and implement data architecture patterns supporting Entity Framework and database-as-code approaches, ensuring alignment between application domain models, APIs, and physical database design.
Partner with the Data Engineering Practice Lead and Data Engineering teams to enable seamless integration of regulatory platform data into the Databricks-based medallion architecture (Bronze and Silver layers), supporting governed and reusable data products for analytics, reporting, AI, and data sharing.
Design secure and performant data access mechanisms, including APIs, views, materialized views, and data-sharing patterns for internal and external consumers.
Provide architectural leadership and guidance to Data Architects, Solution Architects, and Data Engineers to ensure consistency, interoperability, reusability, and adherence to enterprise standards.
Support modernization initiatives including legacy system transformation, cloud migration, master/reference data alignment, and integration of operational and analytical platforms.
Establish and promote best practices for data architecture, modelling, governance, security, resiliency, metadata, and performance optimization.
Ensure solutions support regulatory traceability, auditability, lineage, governance, and compliance requirements.
Maintain architecture artifacts and documentation including data models, integration mappings, lineage, data flows, and architectural decision records.
Participate in solution and platform architecture reviews, contributing to technology selection, implementation strategy, and long-term evolution of enterprise data capabilities.
What we’re looking for in you:
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field.
7+ years of progressive experience in enterprise data architecture and engineering, data modelling, and solution design for large-scale custom application platforms.
Proven expertise designing conceptual, logical, and physical data models for operational, integration, and analytical systems.
Strong experience implementing Entity Framework and database-as-code approaches, including alignment between domain models, APIs, relational schemas, and application development practices.
Experience supporting modern software delivery practices including source control, pull request reviews, CI/CD pipelines, automated deployments, and Agile delivery models.
Hands-on experience designing and implementing cloud-based data platforms and medallion architecture patterns (Bronze, Silver, Gold), preferably using Databricks and Delta Lake technologies.
Experience enabling enterprise analytics, AI, reporting, and data-sharing capabilities through governed and scalable data hub architectures.
Strong expertise with relational and distributed data platforms, including Microsoft SQL Server, Databricks, and cloud-native data architecture patterns.
Strong SQL and data modelling capabilities, including experience with enterprise modelling tools such as IDERA ER/Studio or equivalent.
Experience with data integration, ETL/ELT pipelines, API-based integration, event-driven architectures, and data-sharing patterns.
Experience establishing enterprise data standards, metadata practices, naming conventions, lineage, and data governance processes.
Experience designing secure, scalable, resilient, and auditable data solutions within regulated industries such as government, energy, or oil and gas.
Strong leadership, communication, and stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to guide cross-functional technical teams and align architecture decisions with business objectives.
Ability to balance strategic architecture planning with hands-on technical leadership in fast-paced and evolving delivery environments.
Additional Information:
All applicants must be legally entitled to work in Canada at the time of application.
Should an individual with the required qualifications not be available, applicants with closely related qualifications may be considered. As a result, the position may be redesigned and/or reclassified.
If you need accommodation during any stage of the recruitment process, please email [email protected]. Information relating to the need for accommodation and accommodation measures will be addressed confidentially.
What we offer you:
Great benefits from your first day of work
Flexible Work Program - hybrid work and flexible hours
Hybrid work - employees may work remotely up to five days per calendar month, with a limit of two remote days per week.
Defined benefit pension plans
Flexible benefits program options, including Personal & Health spending account(s)
Generous vacation entitlement and flex days
More information about working at the AER including our comprehensive Total Rewards package can be found in the careers section of our website https://www.aer.ca/providing-information/about-the-aer/careers/what-we-offer.
Our Commitment to Diversity:
At the AER, our values of Accountability, Collaboration, Transparency, and Trust & Respect are foundational to our culture – a culture where every individual, regardless of race, colour, religion, gender, national origin, age, disability, or any other legally protected factors, thrives and contributes their unique perspectives.
Our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion fuels innovation, creating a brighter, more sustainable Alberta for all. Join us in shaping this dynamic future.
Application closing date: June 14, 2026, at midnight
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