Data Solution Architect

This role may be seated in either our Buffalo, NY or Wilmington, DE offices.

M&T Bank is seeking a Data Solution Architect to design and deliver enterprise-scale data solutions that enable analytics, reporting, and data-driven business capabilities. This role partners closely with application, infrastructure, security, data engineering, and business teams to create scalable, secure, and resilient technology solutions that align with enterprise architecture standards and strategic technology roadmaps.

The ideal candidate combines strong architecture and engineering expertise with experience designing cloud, hybrid, and on-premises solutions. This individual will serve as a trusted technology advisor, helping teams modernize platforms, optimize data capabilities, and deliver solutions that meet business, operational, security, and regulatory requirements.

Primary Responsibilities

• Actively participate and collaborate on the design, build, testing, and deployment of technology solutions with assigned Agile teams.
• Collaborate with domain leadership and Enterprise Architecture to understand business drivers, technology capabilities, and future-state objectives and determine appropriate solution designs.
• Develop conceptual, logical, and physical architectures that align with enterprise architecture principles, standards, and reference architectures.
• Design scalable, secure, and resilient data and cloud solutions supporting analytics, reporting, operational, and data-driven business capabilities.
• Translate business, technology, and data requirements into enterprise-grade architectures leveraging cloud, hybrid, and on-premises platforms.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to architect data platforms, integration patterns, APIs, and data movement solutions supporting batch, near-real-time, and streaming workloads.
• Evaluate solution alternatives and communicate architecture tradeoffs, risks, and recommendations to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ensure technology solutions align with security, resiliency, governance, compliance, and risk management requirements.
• Partner with infrastructure, security, platform engineering, and data teams to deliver end-to-end technology solutions.
• Participate in architecture governance activities, design reviews, and technical decision-making processes.
• Contribute to architecture artifacts, technical documentation, solution diagrams, implementation guidance, and operational handoff materials.
• Research emerging technologies and industry trends to identify opportunities for innovation, modernization, and operational improvement.
• Assist Enterprise and Solution Architects in managing architecture dependencies across products and platforms.
• Evaluate vendor solutions and participate in proof-of-concept initiatives supporting strategic technology objectives.
• Understand and adhere to the Company's risk and regulatory standards, policies, and controls in accordance with the Company's Risk Appetite. Identify risk-related issues needing escalation to management.
• Promote an environment that supports belonging and reflects the M&T Bank brand.
• Maintain M&T internal control standards, including timely implementation of internal and external audit points together with any issues raised by external regulators as applicable.
• Complete other related duties as assigned.

Education and Experience Required

Bachelor’s degree and 5 years of relevant work experience, or in lieu of a degree, a combined minimum of 9 year's higher education and/or relevant work experience

• Experience designing and delivering enterprise technology solutions across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments.
• Experience with solution architecture, application architecture, data architecture, and integration design patterns.
• Experience in software, platform, data, or service engineering and delivery.
• Ability to work and communicate effectively with stakeholders at various levels of the organization.
• Ability to research and apply modern technology trends related to technology initiatives.
• Ability to evaluate, compare, and articulate multiple approaches to solving complex technical problems.
• Experience developing and integrating applications, APIs, platforms, and data solutions using established architecture principles and patterns.
• Knowledge of cloud platforms, security controls, infrastructure, networking, and technology modernization practices.
• Understanding of technology governance, resiliency, security, compliance, and risk management requirements.

Education and Experience Preferred

• Graduate degree in a technical discipline.
• Experience working in two or more technical disciplines, such as application development, data engineering, infrastructure engineering, platform engineering, cloud engineering, or solution architecture.
• Experience designing and implementing cloud-based solutions using Microsoft Azure and related technologies.
• Experience with modern data platforms, analytics solutions, integration technologies, and cloud-native architectures.
• Experience designing data lakes, data warehouses, lakehouses, and enterprise data integration solutions.
• Experience delivering technology strategy presentations and architecture recommendations to senior leadership.
• Experience working within Agile and DevOps delivery environments.
• Industry-recognized certifications such as Azure Solutions Architect, Azure Data Engineer, AWS Solutions Architect, or similar cloud and architecture credentials.
• Experience working in the financial services industry.
• Familiarity with banking regulatory, security, governance, and compliance requirements impacting technology and data solutions.

Technical Skills

• Solution architecture and systems design
• Cloud architecture and Microsoft Azure
• Data platforms, analytics, and reporting architectures
• Data integration, ETL/ELT, APIs, and event-driven architectures
• Security, resiliency, and compliance-by-design principles
• Infrastructure and networking concepts
• Architecture governance and standards
• Agile and DevOps methodologies
• Vendor evaluation and technology modernization
• Technical documentation and architecture artifacts

Location