Principal Data Architect

Founded in Switzerland in 1968, Zühlke is owned by its partners and located across Europe and Asia. We are a global transformation partner, with engineering and innovation in our DNA. We're trusted to help clients envision and build their businesses for the future - to run smarter today while adapting for tomorrow’s markets, customers, and communities. Our multidisciplinary teams specialise in tech strategy and business innovation, digital solutions and applications, and device and systems engineering. We excel in complex, regulated spaces including health and finance, connecting strategy, tech implementation, and operational services to help clients become more effective, resilient businesses.

If you share our values and want to do the best work, for the right reasons, we can offer you the chance to do it on a global scale and play a real role in shaping our exciting journey.

The Role

Are you passionate about guiding organizations through their most complex data challenges? We're looking for a Principal Data Architect who thrives on partnering with customers to modernize data platforms, implement effective governance, and drive real business impact with AI. In this role, you’ll combine technical expertise, consulting experience, and strategic thinking to shape the future of data for our clients.

How you'll make impact

• Trusted Advisor: Collaborate with senior technical stakeholders, lead workshops, run architecture reviews, design proof-of-concepts, and help customers evaluate new technologies. Your insights will be valued because you understand what is possible-and what is worth doing.
• Strategic Partner: Guide customers in defining their data vision, whether it’s cloud modernization, building a lakehouse, implementing real-time data, or preparing for AI. You’ll ask the right questions and help them make decisions they can execute.
• Bridge Vision and Reality: Design architectures that are practical, maintainable, and valuable. Stay involved through implementation to ensure solutions work in the real world.
• Business Development: Enjoy early customer conversations, spot opportunities, shape solutions, contribute to winning proposals, and deliver compelling pitches. You can explain complex data and AI topics in business terms.
• Build Reliable AI Systems: Focus on traceability, transparency, and governance to ensure AI systems are reliable and responsible in production.
• Structured Delivery: Apply agile and DevOps practices where they add value. Make architectural decisions based on a solid understanding of modern data architectures, security, governance, and operating models.
• Knowledge Sharing: Mentor others and help build stronger data and AI capabilities across the organization.

What's important to us

• Deep Data Architecture Experience: You’ve delivered real customer projects at scale, understand trade-offs, and know what works in practice.
• Consulting Mindset: You turn complex problems into clear direction, structure ambiguous situations, and help teams navigate trade-offs.
• Commercial Acumen: You connect technical solutions to business value and are energized by early customer engagement.
• Pre-Sales Experience: You’ve contributed to bids, proposals, and pitches, shaping solution narratives and estimating delivery effort.
• Hands-On Technical Depth: You’ve written code, built data models, and managed pipelines. You know Azure and/or AWS, modern data platforms, distributed processing, data modeling, API design, containerization, serverless computing, data governance, and metadata management. Databricks experience (Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, MLflow) is a plus.
• Excellent Communication: You can explain complex topics to both technical and non-technical audiences in German and English.
• Ownership and Leadership: You take responsibility for your work, balance technical excellence with pragmatic delivery, and are self-motivated.
• Technical Foundation: You hold a degree in Computer Science or a comparable field.

What we offer

• Work life blend: we offer a safe & healthy workplace, with flexible working hours and, depending on client needs, the option to work from home up to three days per week
• Profit share scheme: In addition to your annual salary, you may receive a profit share defined by the company’s success in the previous year
• Global and Diverse Zühlke community: witness how colleagues from all our 16 offices across the globe come together to create a unique, positive and inclusive work culture, learning from one another at annual team camps, and celebrating year-end parties and other local festivities.
• Committed to development: we are committed to the growth of our people and are investing in your development. We’re empowering you to build the skills you need to make a positive impact, both personally and for our clients, today and in the future.

To dive deeper into local benefits of working in Zühlke follow the link

If you feel you don't meet all the requirements, we are still happy to get to know you, learn more about your ambitions and ideas and look forward to receiving your application!

We welcome people from all backgrounds, regardless of their gender, personality, national origin, race, religion, colour, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital status, disability or veteran status.