Director, Information Architect

The Senior Information Architect will be responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining scalable, efficient, and well-documented data models that support analytical, operational, and reporting needs across CIM's $35B+ portfolio spanning real estate equity, infrastructure, and private credit investments. This role will establish data modeling standards and techniques from the ground up, developing and managing detailed data models deployed across Databricks Lakehouse as the primary platform, with integration to Snowflake and MongoDB for specific use cases. This highly collaborative role requires extensive partnership with business stakeholders across Fund Accounting, FP&A, Investor Relations, Sales, and Investments teams.

Responsibilities

Partner with business stakeholders across Fund Accounting, FP&A, Global Client Group, and Investments teams to understand data requirements and use cases; Translate complex business requirements into robust data models; Design and develop conceptual, logical, and physical data models for data warehouses, data lakes, operational data stores, and transactional systems; Design dimensional models (star and snowflake schemas) for analytical reporting and BI; Design and implement medallion architecture within the Databricks Lakehouse; Design and maintain relational schemas within Snowflake and other RDBMS; Design and optimize NoSQL data structures (e.g., MongoDB); Develop frameworks for deciding when data belongs in Databricks Lakehouse vs. Snowflake vs. MongoDB; Provide input on query optimization, indexing, and partitioning; Diagnose and resolve performance issues in Spark/Databricks environments; Collaborate with Data Engineers on ETL/ELT processes and SCD patterns; Establish and enforce data modeling standards, naming conventions, metadata management, and data governance policies; Implement row-level and column-level security using Unity Catalog; Embed privacy controls, data classification, and access management into data models and pipelines; Partner with Security, Legal, and Compliance on regulatory data controls; Create and maintain data model documentation, data dictionaries, ERDs, and data lineage

Requirements

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field; 10+ years of dedicated experience as a Data Modeler or Data Architect; Extensive experience with Dimensional Modeling (Kimball), 3NF (Inmon), Data Vault, and NoSQL modeling; Strong expertise in SQL and advanced SQL concepts for data analysis and modeling validation; Proficiency with data modeling tools (e.g., ER/Studio, Erwin, DataGrip, SQL Developer, or similar); Hands-on experience designing and implementing medallion architecture (bronze/silver/gold) in Databricks Lakehouse environments; Deep understanding of Delta Lake features: ACID transactions, time travel, schema evolution, Z-ordering, liquid clustering, and table maintenance; Experience with Unity Catalog for data governance, access control, and lineage tracking; Understanding of Spark optimization, partitioning strategies, and performance tuning for large-scale data processing; Familiarity with Databricks SQL Warehouses, Delta Live Tables, and data pipeline patterns; Proven experience modeling data within a data Lakehouse environment; Solid understanding of Azure Cloud Platform: Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure Databricks; Experience with data ingestion concepts: Kafka, Azure Event Hubs, CDC, APIs and their impact on data structure and modeling

Nice to have

Prior experience within financial services, private equity, or alternative investments sectors; Experience building data architecture standards and practices from scratch in entrepreneurial environments; Understanding of investment data structures: fund hierarchies, investor allocations, NAV calculations, capital calls/distributions; Experience supporting ML/AI use cases including feature engineering and data models for GenAI/RAG applications; Databricks Certified Data Engineer Associate or Professional; Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Engineer Associate; Microsoft Certified: Azure Enterprise Data Analyst Associate; TOGAF Certification

Benefits

Medical, dental, and vision benefit plans; Health Savings Account with generous employer contribution; Company paid life and disability insurance; 401(k) savings plan with company match; Comprehensive paid time off including vacation days, 10 designated holidays, sick time, and bereavement leave; Up to 16 hours of volunteer time off; Up to 16 weeks of Paid Parental Leave; Ongoing professional development programs; Wellness program with monthly and quarterly prizes; Bonus compensation may be a significant part of total compensation