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Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is one of the largest school districts in the United States, serving over 320,000 students in 600+ schools and employing approximately 40,000 people, most of them teachers. CPS has set ambitious goals to ensure that every student, in every school and every neighborhood, has access to a world-class learning experience that prepares each for success in college, career, and civic life.  In order to fulfill this mission, we make three commitments to our students, their families, and all Chicagoans: academic progress, financial stability, and integrity.  Six core values are embedded within these commitments – student-centered, whole child, equity, academic excellence, community partnership, and continuous learning.

The Office of Information and Technology Services (ITS) works to build the capacity of schools to use information and technology, digital transformation, maintain network infrastructure, security standards, and support other departments to meet district goals. ITS provides innovative technology solutions that improve the quality of education for students, reduce the administrative burden on educators, facilitate parent interaction, increase community engagement, and support CPS’ mission of transparency by focusing on the ease and equity of access to information.

Job Summary: 

Under the direction of the Data Solutions Manager, the Data Architect will ensure the district’s data architecture is organized, accessible, secure, and meets the needs of business units. This role is responsible for designing warehouses and databases, and defining how data is collected and organized. 

The Data Architect will be held accountable for the following responsibilities:

• Define and implement the long-term technology strategy and innovations roadmaps across analytics, data engineering, and data platforms
• Create standards, design patterns, and best practices for ETL development in an enterprise data warehouse environment.
• Oversee the expansion of existing data architecture and data query performance optimization.
• Assist with identifying future state architecture (data fabric, active metadata, Data Lake, Data Lakehouse).
• Perform current state data model assessments/target data models and gap analysis.
• Propose new database architecture and support data migration from an existing Legacy system to a new structure
• Create source-to-target mapping documents to transform the source data into the target warehouse and test final transformations. 
• Maintain and create extensions to ODS.
• Assist in designing the data warehouse and ensure that data is stored and maintained in consistent formats. 
• Counsel with Analysts and Subject Matter Experts on specific topics in order to accurately capture existing business rules/principles.
• Establish data modeling naming standards, abbreviations, guidelines, and best practices.
• Develop and maintain conceptual, physical, and logical data models.
• Stay current with the latest technologies and trends.
• Other duties as assigned.

In order to be successful and achieve the above responsibilities, the Data Architect must possess the following qualifications: 

Education Required: 

• A bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in computer science, data science, engineering, or related field, required.
• Master’s degree, preferred.

Experience Required: 

• Minimum of seven (7) years of technology delivery experience with at least five (5) years focus in database system architecture and design including the following is required:
• • Experience producing high-quality Solution architecture and design documents.
  • Experience leading projects involving data warehousing, data modeling, and data analysis.
  • Hands-on experience in performance tuning techniques.
  • Experience with API, Web Service implementation (REST, API, SOAP API).
  • Experience with Cloud data warehouse technologies (Azure Data Warehouse, Amazon Redshift, Snowflake).
  • Experience with business intelligence tools and technologies such as ETL, Power BI, and Tableau.
  • 10+ years of the above experience is preferred.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Ability to socialize and communicate the technical architecture and design to business and developers.
• Expertise in BI and data warehousing principles including data modeling, data quality, extract/transform/load process as they apply to data preparation for BI/ Analytic solutions.
• Expert level knowledge of T-SQL, Stored Procedures, Data Modeling, Views, and Functions.
• Ability to resolve performance issues.
• Ability to collaborate and excel in complex, cross-functional teams involving data scientists, business analysts, and stakeholders
• Familiarity with latest trends in data engineering and data management (APIs, data virtualization, stream data integration, augmented data integration).
• Familiarity with SQL Server database administration.
• Familiarity with modern ETL integration solutions (SSIS, Ab Initio, Datastage, Informatica, Azure Data Factory).
• Ability to regularly learn and adopt new technology, especially in the AI/ML realm.
• Familiarity with Big Data is preferred.
• Familiarity with K-12 Education is preferred.

Conditions of Employment

As a condition of employment with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), employees are required to:

• Establish/Maintain Chicago Residency -Employees are required to live within the geographic boundaries of the City of Chicago within six months of their CPS hire date and maintain residency throughout their employment with the district. The Chicago residency requirement does not apply to temporary/part-time positions, however, all CPS employees must be residents of Illinois.
• Be Fully Vaccinated Against COVID-19 -Unless approved for a medical or religious exemption, all employees are required to be up-to-date on COVID-19 vaccinations, including boosters, and to submit proof of vaccination to the district within 30 days of hire. “Up-to-date” on vaccination is defined as being at least two weeks past all primary vaccine doses and any applicable boosters.