Data Architect
What the work is
Designs, develops and manages complex data models within an organisation.
Would you enjoy the work?
These are the main tasks in the official description. Mark how each one sounds to you.
- Develops and maintains a data architecture strategy aligned with business objectives and data management principles
- Assesses appropriate technologies for data management, storage, analysis and disposal for the organisation
- Designs conceptual data models and implements metadata standards to provide a clear understanding of organisational data assets
- Defines data flow, data usage and data integration processes within an organisation
- Designs, develops and implements physical databases or data warehouses to support requirements for transactional data, business intelligence and data analytics
- Assesses proposed changes to object or data structures, and evaluates alternative options
Try it
A simulation and a case study from this kind of work, set in the data team of a fictional online grocery delivery business. They are fictional.
The kind of days you could have
Good days
- A messy pile of numbers becomes one chart that makes everyone say 'oh, that's why'
- A tool you built saves the warehouse team a whole morning every week
- You catch a data error before it reaches the people who would have acted on it
Hard days
- Someone senior loves a chart that you know does not tell the whole story
- Hours of cleaning data that nobody will ever see, followed by a request to redo it
- A pipeline breaks at three in the morning and the dashboards go blank
Written by Career Calling as a general guide. Real roles vary by employer and place.
Work a mission
Step into a simulated workplace in this field, with a brief from your manager.
Description and tasks: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Occupation Standard Classification for Australia, 2024, Version 1.0 (opens another site), occupation 223232, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The skill guide above is our plain English summary.