Principal IT Data Architect - Snowflake, Data Governance & AI Platforms

Careers that change lives start here. Medtronic is a global leader in healthcare technology with a Mission to alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life. Our 95,000 employees work across more than 150 countries to put patients first — developing innovative medical technologies that improve the lives of 72+ million patients each year. Your unique talents will help shape the future of healthcare while building a career grounded in purpose, growth, and impact.

A Day in the Life

The Principal IT Data Architect is responsible for defining and leading the organization's data architecture strategy to ensure data is secure, reliable, scalable, and accessible for business operations, analytics, and AI initiatives. This role designs enterprise data solutions, establishes data standards and governance practices, and works closely with business and technology teams to enable data-driven decision-making. The Principal IT Data Architect provides technical leadership, drives innovation in data platforms and integrations, and ensures alignment between data architecture and business goals.

Responsibilities may include the following and other duties may be assigned.

• Define and maintain the enterprise data architecture strategy, standards, and roadmap.
• Design conceptual, logical, and physical data models supporting commercial business processes.
• Establish architecture principles, patterns, and best practices that improve scalability, performance, and operational efficiency.
• Evaluate and approve solution designs to ensure alignment with enterprise architecture standards.
• Lead the architecture and evolution of enterprise cloud data platforms, with a focus on Snowflake.
• Design modern data lakehouse architectures, semantic layers, and data consumption frameworks.
• Drive adoption of advanced platform capabilities supporting analytics, AI, and business intelligence.
• Ensure platforms meet performance, reliability, scalability, security, and cost optimization objectives.
• Design enterprise data integration frameworks connecting business applications, analytics platforms, and external data sources.
• Define standards for ETL/ELT processes, APIs, event-driven architectures, and real-time data movement.
• Establish and promote best practices for data governance, metadata management, data quality, and master data management.
• Ensure data lineage, traceability, consistency, and compliance requirements are effectively addressed.
• Enable enterprise reporting, analytics, AI, and machine learning initiatives through robust data architecture.
• Partner with business, analytics, and data science teams to develop scalable and reusable data products.
• Define architecture patterns supporting advanced analytics, Generative AI, and intelligent automation capabilities.
• Translate business objectives into scalable data solutions that drive meaningful outcomes.
• Design secure data architectures that comply with global privacy, security, and regulatory requirements.
• Implement data protection, access controls, auditing, monitoring, and governance capabilities.
• Partner with cybersecurity and compliance teams to mitigate enterprise data risks.
• Act as a trusted advisor to business and technology leaders on strategic data architecture decisions.
• Lead architecture reviews and provide guidance on complex enterprise initiatives.
• Mentor architects, engineers, and technical teams while fostering architectural excellence.
• Collaborate across global teams to drive successful delivery of enterprise data programs.

Required Knowledge and Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Data Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field.
• 14+ years of experience in Data Architecture, Data Engineering, or Enterprise Architecture.
• 5+ years of hands-on experience designing and supporting Snowflake-based data solutions.
• Strong expertise in data modeling, data warehousing, lakehouse architectures, and cloud-based data platforms.
• Advanced expertise with Snowflake architecture, governance, and AI capabilities.
• Experience with Snowflake Cortex AI, Semantic Views, or agentic AI solutions.
• Experience with Databricks, Informatica Cloud, Coalesce, dbt, or Airflow.
• Experience designing enterprise-scale integration, analytics, and data management solutions.
• Deep understanding of data governance, metadata management, data quality, and master data management practices.
• Experience working with cloud technologies (Azure preferred; AWS or GCP experience also considered).
• Strong business acumen with the ability to connect technology strategy to business outcomes.
• Excellent communication, leadership, and stakeholder management skills, including experience working with senior leadership.
• Experience operating within global, matrixed organizations.
• Master's degree in a related technical discipline.
• Familiarity with Salesforce, CPQ, commercial systems, and marketing technology platforms.
• Experience supporting AI/ML or Generative AI solutions in production environments.
• Experience within healthcare, medical device, life sciences, or other regulated industries.
• Relevant certifications such as SnowPro Advanced, Azure Data Engineer, TOGAF, or equivalent.

Physical Job Requirements

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by employees assigned to this position, but they are not an exhaustive list of all the required responsibilities and skills of this position. 

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Apply only through official Medtronic channels. All legitimate Medtronic recruiting communications come from approved Medtronic platforms and official @medtronic.com email addresses.

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Benefits & Compensation

Medtronic offers a competitive Salary and flexible Benefits Package
A commitment to our employees lives at the core of our values. We recognize their contributions. They share in the success they help to create. We offer a wide range of benefits, resources, and competitive compensation plans designed to support you at every career and life stage.

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This position is eligible for a short-term incentive called the Medtronic Incentive Plan (MIP).