Senior Staff Data Architect

About SonderMind

At SonderMind, we believe everyone deserves one personalized, connected, and effective mental health destination to take care of their mental health and well-being at any stage of life. SonderMind care encompasses everything from therapy and medication management to meditation and mindfulness exercises. Our clinicians leverage our digital tools and research to deliver increasingly high-quality care and to develop thriving practices. Combining technology and human connection, SonderMind drives better outcomes through our comprehensive approach. Learn more about SonderMind at sondermind.com or download the mobile app, available on iOS and Android.

To follow the latest SonderMind news, get to know our clients, and learn about what it’s like to work at SonderMind, you can follow us on Instagram, Linkedin, and Twitter.

About the Role

We are seeking a Senior Staff Data Architect to join our team and play a pivotal role in shaping our future data infrastructure, systems, and analytics capabilities, with a strong focus on big data platforms, streaming data architectures, and scalable complex systems. In this role, you will collaborate with data engineers, data scientists, product teams, and business stakeholders to build robust futureproof systems, ensure data quality, and align strategies with business goals. This role will require a combination of hands-on technical expertise and production deployments, strategic vision, and cross-functional leadership to deliver scalable, high-quality solutions across the organization.

What you will do

• Strategic Data Architecture: Design, implement, and champion scalable data architectures that support large scale and streaming systems, reporting and analytics tools, personalized recommendations, etc.
• Big Data and Streaming Systems: Lead the development of data platforms that handle streaming and batch data.
• AI and Personalization Integration: Collaborate with data science and AI engineers to integrate models and agents into SonderMind’s infrastructure.
• Production Deployment & Prototyping: Take ownership of deploying and maintaining reliable production services and prototypes alongside data and product engineering teams. Be accountable for data quality and SLA targets across all data pipelines. Greater than 50% of this role will be focused on developing and deploying pipelines, integrations, and services.
• Thought Leadership, Mentor & Emerging Trends: Drive and implement best practices in data and analytics engineering - stay current with trends in data modeling and architecture, AI/ML Ops, and analytics to innovate and optimize systems proactively. Coach and mentor more junior staff.
• Collaboration & Cross-Functional Leadership: Partner with data scientists/analysts, product teams, engineering, and business stakeholders to create foundational datasets that are trusted, well-understood, and aligned with business objectives.

What does success look like?

First 30 Days: Learning and Integration

• Develop a thorough understanding of the organization’s data infrastructure, existing systems, and technology stack to identify strengths and improvement areas.
• Meet with key stakeholders, including data engineers, data scientists, product managers, and business leaders, to understand priorities, pain points, and strategic objectives.
• Begin hands-on exploration of the data ecosystem, including testing access, running sample queries, and reviewing code repositories.

First 60 Days: Contribution and Strategy Development

• Build on learnings from the first 30 days and take ownership of at least one data pipeline or architecture project.
• Share initial observations and strategic insights with leadership, highlighting areas for immediate and long-term improvement.

First 90 Days: Leadership and Measurable Impact

• Successfully design and deploy a high-quality, production data model, pipeline, or service identified in the first 60 days with measurable business impact.
• Deliver a prioritized roadmap for improving existing systems, addressing gaps, and implementing new technologies based on evaluations and leadership discussions conducted in the first 60 days.
• Build trusted relationships across teams and demonstrate measurable progress in aligning data infrastructure with business goals.

Ongoing Success

• Leverage relationships and deep technical expertise to proactively identify and develop data solutions to business problems – expanding the impact of Sondermind’s data to address client and provider needs.
• Demonstrate thought leadership by continuously evaluating, introducing, and prototyping appropriate technologies to address data access, latency, or cost efficiency.

Who You Are 

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, or a related field.
• 8+ years of designing and deploying scalable, production data systems.
• Strong coding expertise in Python
• Expertise with big data platforms such as hadoop and spark, as well as cloud-based platforms such as Azure and Snowflake
• Expertise with vector databases and retrieval systems such as PGVector, AWS Vector Search, etc.
• Proficiency with messaging and eventing systems such as RabbitMQ, Apache Kafka, and Amazon Kinesis.
• Proficiency with AWS services such as: S3, Lambda, Redshift, DocumentDB, Athena, EMR, Elasticache, Kinesis, Sagemaker.
• Expertise developing and deploying with Gitlab, Docker, Kubernetes and Helm, and CI/CD
• Strong understanding of database design, ETL/ELT workflows, data governance, and data quality processes.
• Demonstrated ability to translate business requirements into effective data solutions.
• Excellent communication skills for technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Preferred:

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, or a related field.
• Proficiency with DBT, PostgreSQL
• Knowledge and understanding of CDP platforms such as Segment
• Experience with complementary (python) coding languages such as Rust, Go, Julia, etc.
• Familiarity with full-stack development frameworks (e.g., TypeScript, React, Node).
• Experience with operational software systems such as Salesforce,
• Hands-on experience with event-based CDP platforms such as Segment
• Experience with generative AI agentic engineering principles

Our Benefits 

The anticipated salary range for this role will be $144,000-180,000.

As leaders in redesigning behavioral health, we walk the walk with our employees' benefits. We want the experience of working at SonderMind to accelerate people’s careers and enrich their lives, so we focus on meeting SonderMinders wherever they are and supporting them in all facets of their lives and work.

Our benefits include:

• A commitment to fostering flexible hybrid work
• A generous PTO policy with a minimum of three weeks off per year
• Free therapy coverage benefits to ensure our employees have access to the care they need (must be enrolled in our medical plans to participate)
• Competitive Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage with plans to meet every need, including HSA ($1,100 company contribution) and FSA options
• Employer-paid short-term, long-term disability, life & AD&D to cover life's unexpected events. Not only that, we also cover the difference in salary for up to seven (7) weeks of short-term disability leave (after the required waiting period) should you need to use it.
• Eight weeks of paid Parental Leave (if the parent also qualifies for STD, this benefit is in addition which allows between 8-16 weeks of paid leave)
• 401K retirement plan with 100% matching which immediately vests on up to 4% of base salary
• Travel to Denver 1x a year for annual Shift gathering
• Fourteen (14) company holidays
• Company Shutdown between Christmas and New Years
• Supplemental life insurance, pet insurance coverage, commuter benefits and more!

Application Deadline

This position will be an ongoing recruitment process and will be open until filled.

Equal Opportunity 
SonderMind does not discriminate in employment opportunities or practices based on race, color, creed, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, religion, veteran and military status, marital status, registered domestic partner status, age, national origin or ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition (including genetic information or characteristics), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local laws.