Principal Solution Architect - Data Platform Security

Role Overview

We are looking for a Principal Solution Architect to join our Managed Services team. In this role, you will lead the architecture, security posture, and continuous improvement of enterprise Snowflake platforms for complex, security-sensitive clients. You will own the loop from threat detection through remediation and serve as a senior technical leader across platform security, governance, and operational resilience.

You will collaborate closely with client stakeholders, internal engineers, security teams, and practice leadership to define enforceable standards, operate proactive monitoring and alerting pipelines, and guide key decisions across access, governance, network security, identity, and data protection. You will also help strengthen phData’s managed Snowflake offerings by improving processes, automation, and reusable patterns that increase the quality and scalability of secure managed services delivery.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture, hardening, and continuous security improvement of enterprise Snowflake platforms across complex, security-sensitive client environments, ensuring strong controls, resilience, and long-term maintainability.
• Translate business, security, and technical requirements into operating models, roadmaps, and engineering work that strengthen platform controls, access patterns, governance, and secure delivery practices.
• Design and lead proactive monitoring, alerting, and threat detection across Snowflake environments using native audit and telemetry data, integrating with SIEM or similar platforms to detect, investigate, and remediate anomalous or unauthorized activity.
• Use threat modeling and attack-path analysis to identify and remediate risk across access models, data sharing, network controls, identity posture, third-party integrations, service accounts, secrets management, and configuration drift.
• Guide architectural and operational decisions across governance, authentication, privileged access, network security, and data protection, balancing platform risk, business priorities, compliance requirements, and performance goals.
• Serve as a trusted advisor and senior technical leader across client stakeholders, internal engineers, and partner teams, clearly communicating trade-offs, platform risks, and remediation plans while guiding difficult decisions in complex environments.
• Contribute to and improve managed services standards by creating automation, runbooks, accelerators, and best practices that enhance the quality, consistency, and scalability of secure Snowflake operations.
• Lead cross-functional teams and mentor engineers while helping mature phData’s secure managed services delivery model.

About You

You are a client-focused security engineer and technical leader who thrives in fast-paced, high-accountability environments with complex Snowflake platforms and evolving threat landscapes.

You are comfortable operating in distributed, global teams and partnering with colleagues across time zones. You enjoy finding the risks others miss, thinking in threat models, operating proactive detection pipelines, and owning the full loop from identifying risk to closing it. You bring strong executive presence, sound judgment, and clear communication to security-sensitive client work.

Required Qualifications

Experience

• 15+ years of experience in cloud and data infrastructure, including significant experience in security engineering, platform security, or security operations roles.

Technical / Functional Skills

• Significant production experience with Snowflake, including platform architecture, administration, security design, and operational governance in complex enterprise environments.
• Deep expertise in Snowflake platform security, including role-based access control, managed access, secure data sharing, account guardrails, privileged access controls, governance patterns, and data protection controls such as masking and row- or column-level access.
• Hands-on experience with Snowflake audit and telemetry data, including sources such as ACCOUNT_USAGE views like ACCESS_HISTORY, QUERY_HISTORY, LOGIN_HISTORY, and POLICY_EVENTS, for investigation, anomaly detection, and control validation.
• Experience integrating Snowflake audit logs, platform logs, and security events into SIEM or similar monitoring platforms such as Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, CrowdStrike, or Datadog, including designing log pipelines, detection rules, escalation workflows, and remediation processes.
• Strong technical depth across network, identity, authentication, secrets management, and service account lifecycle controls relevant to Snowflake and cloud data platforms, including private endpoints, VPC or VNet peering, PrivateLink, IP allowlisting, MFA, SSO or SAML, OAuth token scoping, key pair authentication, and credential rotation policies.
• Hands-on experience with secrets managers and related tooling such as AWS Secrets Manager, HashiCorp Vault, or Azure Key Vault.
• Strong working experience with SQL, Infrastructure as Code, Python automation, and CI/CD to support secure platform delivery and repeatable operational controls.
• Experience delivering managed services or consulting engagements in complex enterprise environments, with the ability to break down multifaceted platform and security challenges into structured, actionable work.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Snowflake certifications, including SnowPro Core and one or more advanced certifications.
• Security certifications such as CISSP, CEH, AWS Security Specialty, or equivalent.
• Prior experience in highly regulated industries such as life sciences, healthcare, or financial services, including environments with compliance requirements such as SOC 2, HIPAA, or PCI-DSS.
• Experience in managed services environments supporting multiple customer accounts and distributed global teams.
• Contributions to technical communities through writing, speaking, internal accelerators, or reusable security assets.

Why phData?

• Impactful Work: Partner with leading organizations on meaningful data and AI initiatives.
• Collaborative Culture: Work with a supportive, high-performing global team that values transparency, autonomy, and continuous improvement.
• Growth Opportunities: Access to challenging projects, mentorship, and structured development pathways.
• Values-Driven: We prioritize doing the right thing for our clients, our teams, and our community.

Benefits at phData

• Remote-First Work Environment
• 401k plan with company match
• Dental and Vision insurance
• Home Office Equipment Stipend
• Annual stipend for Learning and Development
• Competitive compensation, excellent benefits, 4 weeks PTO, plus 10 holidays and additional perks