Distinguished Data & Integration Architect

Overview

At PowerSchool, we are a dedicated team of innovators guided by our shared purpose of powering personalized education for students around the world. From the central office to the classroom to the home, PowerSchool supports the entire educational ecosystem as the global leader of cloud-based software for K-12 education. Our employees make it all possible, and a career with us means you’re joining a successful team committed to engaging, empowering, and improving the K-12 education experience everywhere.

Team Overview

Our Information Technology (IT) team leads all aspects of IT systems and processes across the enterprise, including data services, security, compliance, applications, automation, and end-user services. Through innovative and streamlined technology solutions, this dynamic team enables company growth, protects data, and serves as a critical partner to all departments of PowerSchool.

Responsibilities

The Distinguished Enterprise Data & Integration Architect serves as the company’s most senior technical authority on enterprise data strategy, integration architecture, and data governance. This role sets the long-term architectural vision for how data moves, is stored, governed, and consumed across the organization-and ensures that vision directly enables business strategy, product innovation, analytics, and AI capabilities.

This is a visionary leadership role that combines deep technical mastery with enterprise-wide strategic influence. The Distinguished Architect operates as a trusted advisor to executive leadership and shapes cross-functional technology decisions throughout PowerSchool.

Key Responsibilities

Enterprise Strategic Leadership

• Serve as the principal technical advisor to the CTO/CIO and executive leadership team on all matters related to data strategy, integration architecture, and enterprise data platforms.
• Define and own the enterprise-wide data and integration architecture vision, ensuring alignment with company-level business strategy, product roadmap, and growth objectives.
• Drive technology strategy decisions that extend beyond the data ecosystem, influencing platform direction, build-vs-buy decisions, and technology investment priorities at the enterprise level.
• Present architectural vision, risk assessments, and technology investment recommendations to executive leadership and, where appropriate, to the board.

Enterprise Integration Architecture

• Own and evolve the enterprise integration architecture spanning ERP, CRM, HR, and SaaS systems, setting the strategic direction for how the company’s systems ecosystem interconnects.
• Establish enterprise-wide integration standards, patterns, and principles (batch, near-real-time, event-driven) that other architects and engineering teams execute against.
• Provide architectural governance and oversight for large-scale integration initiatives (e.g., Workday implementations, M&A system integrations), ensuring alignment with enterprise standards.
• Define non-functional standards for error handling, logging, monitoring, retry logic, and performance that become organizational defaults.

Data Platform Architecture

• Own the target-state data platform architecture vision using Microsoft Fabric and related Azure services, setting the multi-year roadmap for the company’s data infrastructure.
• Establish architectural principles for landing zone patterns, transformation layers, and modeling standards that engineering teams implement.
• Ensure data platform strategy supports scalable, cost-effective designs that enable analytics, AI/ML, and product innovation.
• Drive alignment between data ingestion pipelines and enterprise integration architecture to eliminate redundancy and technical debt.

Data Governance Architecture

• Define and champion the enterprise data governance framework and operating model, establishing this as a strategic capability rather than a compliance exercise.
• Establish data domains, ownership, stewardship, and metadata standards at the enterprise level, influencing cross-functional adoption.
• Set the strategic direction for governance tooling (e.g., Microsoft Purview) including lineage, catalog, and classification, ensuring governance is embedded into platform and integration design from inception.

Organizational Influence & Technical Leadership

• Lead the enterprise architecture review board (or equivalent), establishing architecture principles and standards that all technical teams adhere to.
• Mentor and develop senior architects and technical leads across the organization, raising the overall technical bar and building architectural capability.
• Influence hiring standards, technical interview frameworks, and career development pathways for architecture and senior engineering roles.
• Create and maintain reference architectures, design guidelines, and architectural decision records that serve as the authoritative source for the engineering organization.
• Shape engineering culture around architectural rigor, documentation standards, and design-first practices.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• 15+ years of progressive experience in data architecture, integration architecture, or platform architecture, with at least 5 years operating at a principal, distinguished, or equivalent senior architecture level.
• Demonstrated history of setting enterprise-wide architectural vision and strategy that directly influenced business outcomes.
• Deep expertise designing enterprise integrations using iPaaS or middleware platforms (Boomi or similar) across batch, near-real-time, and event-driven patterns.
• Deep expertise with modern data warehousing/lakehouse architectures and Microsoft data platforms (Fabric, Synapse, SQL, Power BI, or similar).
• Proven experience defining and implementing enterprise data governance frameworks and metadata management tooling (Purview or similar).
• Advanced SQL skills and working proficiency in at least one scripting/programming language (Python preferred).
• Experience with APIs, REST, JSON, and data transformation pipelines.
• Track record of influencing executive-level technology decisions and presenting to senior leadership.

Compensation & Benefits

Compensation & Benefits

Along with our highly market competitive base compensation, PowerSchool offers the following benefits:

• Comprehensive Insurance Coverage (including Medical, Dental, Vision, Pharmacy benefits, Life Insurance and AD&D)

• Flexible Spending Accounts and Health Savings Accounts

• Short-Term Disability and Long-Term Disability

• Comprehensive 401(k) plan

• Generous Parental Leave

• Unrestricted paid time off (known as Discretionary Time Off - DTO)

• Wellness Program, including ClassPass & Employee Assistance Program

• Tuition Reimbursement

• Optional Benefits: Pet Insurance, Identity Theft Protection, Student Debt Repayment Program and Prepaid Legal coverage

EEO Commitment

EEO Commitment

PowerSchool is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. PowerSchool is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status. Our inclusive culture empowers PowerSchoolers to deliver the best results for our customers. We not only celebrate the diversity of our workforce, we celebrate the diverse ways we work. If you have a disability and need an accommodation regarding our recruiting process, please let us know by emailing [email protected].