Senior Digital Architect (Senior Data Solution Architect)

Career Area:

Job Description:

Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc.

When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do - but also about each other. We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here - we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it.

About Caterpillar

Caterpillar Inc. is the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, off-highway diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines and diesel-electric locomotives.

For nearly 100 years, we’ve been helping customers build a better, more sustainable world and are committed and contributing to a reduced-carbon future. Our innovative products and services, backed by our global dealer network, provide exceptional value that helps customers succeed.

Your Impact Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc

When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do - but also about each other. We are the makers, problem solvers and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here - we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it.

Job Summary

We are seeking a skilled Senior Digital Architect (Senior Data Solution Architect) to join FOM Data ML Ops and Support -CAT IT Division

The Data Solution Architect will provide strategic leadership for the overall architecture of the Manufacturing and Supply Digital Platform by designing platform capabilities that anticipate evolving business requirements and use cases.

The role will collaborate with peer architects and Enterprise Capability Owners to deliver diverse use cases thru applications, analytics, agents, and business intelligence. The position holds accountability for developing an enterprise-wide data architecture, creating reusable data components that can be assembled into datasets for business applications, analytics, business intelligence, agents, and digital twin solutions .Additionally, the role will leverage innovative NVIDIA technologies to advance digital twin capabilities, simulation, and optimization.

The preference for this role is to be based out of Chennai - Brigade World Trade Centre

What you will do

• Design and deliver solution architecture artifacts that address business problems and support successful implementation.
• Translate business requirements into scalable data and digital solutions by leveraging platform capabilities across data, analytics, intelligent agents, and applications.
• Lead solution design activities with a strong focus on mapping business requirements to source data, ensuring clear traceability from business need through source alignment, transformation logic, and downstream consumption.
• Define and maintain conceptual, logical, and physical data models that support operational and analytical use cases across enterprise platforms.
• Define API and interface models that support reliable data exchange across source systems, platforms, and downstream consumers.
• Establish and maintain data contracts with source systems, including agreement on data definitions, schema, ownership, quality expectations, delivery timeliness, and change management.
• Own data quality expectations within assigned solutions by defining validation rules, controls, reconciliation checks, and monitoring requirements across the data lifecycle.
• Partner with product, engineering, and business teams to evaluate technology options and support the adoption of tools and capabilities that improve solution delivery.
• Collaborate across cross-functional teams to ensure solution designs are practical, scalable, supportable, and aligned with enterprise standards and business outcomes.
• Provide architecture guidance to delivery teams and help resolve design issues related to data integration, source alignment, data modelling, and implementation readiness

What you will have

Solution Architecture

• Extensive knowledge of technologies, architecture methods, and design practices used to define end-to-end solutions, integration patterns, processing flows, and platform interactions.
• Ability to create solution designs that align with standards and support business and technical needs.

Data Modeling

• Strong knowledge of data modelling principles, enterprise data design, and integration patterns.
• Ability to develop logical and physical data models, define scalable data structures, and support both operational(OLTP) and analytical (OLAP)solution needs.

Source Data Mapping

• Ability to translate business requirements into data requirements by identifying relevant source systems, mapping business entities and attributes to source data, and defining how data will be transformed, validated, and consumed.

Data Quality Ownership

Good understanding of data quality principles, controls, and governance expectations. Ability to define quality requirements, establish validation rules, support issue resolution, and ensure trusted, reliable, and fit-for-purpose data across solutions.

Data Contracts

• Strong understanding of how to establish data contracts with source systems to ensure alignment on data definitions, schema, ownership, quality expectations, refresh patterns, and change control.

Analytical Thinking

• In-depth problem-solving and analytical skills with the ability to break down complex business and technical issues, identify root causes, and develop practical solution options.

Effective Communication

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, and collaborate effectively across teams.

Requirements Analysis

• Strong understanding of requirements gathering and analysis techniques.
• Ability to work with product managers to clarify functional/non-functional needs and translate them into data solution.

Considerations for Top Candidates

• Progressive career in data engineering, data architecture, or solution architecture(typically 12+ years)
• Demonstrated experience designing and delivering solution architecture for enterprise-scale applications and data platforms in public cloud or hybrid environments. Strong experience in AWS ecosystem is preferred.
• Strong experience in data modeling, including physical data modeling, schema design, entity relationships, and optimization for operational and analytical use cases.
• Demonstrated ability to map business requirements to source data, including source system analysis, attribute mapping, data dictionary, transformation design, data lineage and end-to-end traceability.
• Proven experience owning or driving data quality as part of solution delivery, including validation rules, reconciliation logic, defect identification, and fit-for-purpose data controls.
• Experience establishing and managing data contracts with source systems, including schema alignment, data definitions, quality expectations, latency expectations, and change coordination.
• Strong understanding and practical experience in three or more of the following areas: Real-time event and message processing .
• Data lakes and modern data platforms
• Large-scale data transformation and analytics
• IoT edge and cloud data processing
• SQL and NoSQL data Modeling
• Integration of operational and analytical systems
• Understanding of vector database and knowledge graph modelling will be an advantage.
• Good understanding of Agile delivery practices in cloud environments, including environment management, peer review, test automation, CI/CD, and resource optimization.
• Hands-on experience designing or developing solutions in a public cloud environment.
• Familiarity with Agentic AI, AI/ML-enabled solutions, analytics platforms, and data-driven applications.
• Understanding of enterprise data integration patterns and analytical ecosystems.
• Strong collaboration and interpersonal skills, with the ability to guide design discussions, mentor team members, and communicate effectively on complex or sensitive topics.
• Experience across multiple business processes, platforms, or IT disciplines is beneficial.
• Experience in manufacturing and/or supply chain domains is a plus.
• This position requires candidate to work a 5-day -a -week schedule in the Hosur Facility

Skills desired:

Analytical Thinking: Knowledge of techniques and tools that promote effective analysis; ability to determine the root cause of organizational problems and create alternative solutions that resolve these problems.

Level Extensive Experience:

• Seeks discrepancies and inconsistencies in available information; explains variances.
• Organizes and prioritizes the sequence of steps to be taken to remedy the situation.
• Identifies many possible causes for a problem based on prior experience and current research.
• Quantifies the costs, benefits, risks and chances for success before recommending a course of action.
• Approaches a complex problem by breaking it down into its component parts.
• Chooses among a diverse set of analytical tools according to the nature of the situation. Effective Communications: Understanding of effective communication concepts, tools and techniques; ability to effectively transmit, receive, and accurately interpret ideas, information, and needs through the application of appropriate communication behaviors. Level Working Knowledge:
• Delivers helpful feedback that focuses on behaviors without offending the recipient.
• Listens to feedback without defensiveness and uses it for own communication effectiveness.
• Makes oral presentations and writes reports needed for own work.
• Avoids technical jargon when inappropriate.
• Looks for and considers non-verbal cues from individuals and groups. Application Design, Architecture: Knowledge of application design and architecture principles and practices; ability to utilize application design methodologies, tools, and techniques to convert business requirements and logical models into a technical application design. Level Working Knowledge:
• Creates a basic architecture diagram, including component interactions and data flows.
• Identifies and prioritizes application design and architecture tasks, such as refactoring and technical debt reduction.
• Selects and presents design alternatives for applications of small to medium complexity.
• Uses design tools and technologies to develop prototypes and proof of concepts.
• Documents design decisions and rationale for future reference and review. Data Architecture: Knowledge of processes, techniques and factors that affect data architecture; ability to design blueprints on how to integrate data resources for business processes and functional support. Level Working Knowledge:
• Participates in designing blueprints on how to structure, store and utilize data.
• Follows standards, processes and methodologies to develop each phase of data architecture (e.g. data manipulating processes, database technology generating processes).
• Selects criteria used to support data processing operations, data flow and the flow control system.
• Addresses stakeholder concerns by utilizing business data modeling, including data entities, attributes and their relationships.
• Performs administrative work and provides technical solutions for routine problems in data architecture projects. IT Architecture: Knowledge of Information Technology (IT) architecture; ability to design and improve organizational IT structures, supporting business operations. Level Working Knowledge:
• Assists in the investigation of an organization's IT requirements.
• Assesses the functionality of components - hardware, software and telecommunications.
• Adheres to IT architecture guidelines and principles.
• Selects design tools and technologies for IT architecture.
• Documents problems that occur in the IT architecture design process. Platform Architecture: Knowledge of technologies and methods to design processing mechanisms and roadmaps to execute business application systems; ability to design these roadmaps and deploy supportive interfaces for end-users to access related systems, in accordance with standards and processes. Level Working Knowledge:
• Designs routine platform architectural roadmaps and relevant solutions for end-users to access interfaces.
• Follows existing processes and standards in developing IT systems for information storing, delivering and optimizing.
• Selects appropriate operating systems, hardware and programming languages to operate platform processing.
• Tests the effectiveness of platform architecture and ensures that business requirements are fully met, while using the platform architecture.
• Solves routine problems in the design process of platform architectural roadmaps; documents these issues. Requirements Analysis: Knowledge of tools, methods, and techniques of requirement analysis; ability to elicit, analyze and record required business functionality and non-functionality requirements to ensure the success of a system or software development project. Level Working Knowledge:
• Follows policies, practices and standards for determining functional and informational requirements.
• Confirms deliverables associated with requirements analysis.
• Communicates with customers and users to elicit and gather client requirements.
• Participates in the preparation of detailed documentation and requirements.
• Utilizes specific organizational methods, tools and techniques for requirements analysis. Target Architecture: Knowledge of target architecture; ability to develop the IT blueprint and roadmap while aligning the architecture and processes with business strategies and objectives. Level Working Knowledge:
• Analyzes the future state of IT needed to meet stakeholder requirements; summarizes business objectives into several actionable sub-targets.
• Follows existing processes and standards in the design and development of IT architecture.
• Develops roadmaps for target architecture based on models of business services (e.g. applications, data and systems).
• Reports on progress made in developing the target architecture; tackles obstacles encountered throughout the design process.
• Provides routine solutions to issues and recommendations for projects in target architecture development.

What you will get:

• Work Life Harmony
• Earned and medical leave.
• Relocation assistance

Holistic Development

• Personal and professional development through Caterpillar ‘s employee resource groups across the globe
• Career developments opportunities with global prospects

Health and Wellness

• Medical coverage -Medical, life and personal accident coverage
• Employee mental wellness assistance program

Financial Wellness

• Employee investment plan
• Pay for performance -Annual incentive Bonus plan.

Additional Information:

Caterpillar is not currently hiring individuals for this position who now or in the future require sponsorship for employment visa status; however, as a global company, Caterpillar offers many job opportunities outside of the U.S. which can be found through our employment website at www.caterpillar.com/careers

Posting Dates:

Caterpillar is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants of any age are encouraged to apply

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