A professional whose role is to design, create, deploy, and manage an organization's data architecture is a Data Architect. It is the responsibility of data architects to determine how the data will be stored, accessed, retrieved, integrated, and consumed by different entities in an IT environment or by any application while using and processing the data when required.
It is considered to be one of the four primary domains of enterprise architecture and is closely connected with the business architecture of an organization.
Responsibilities of a Data Architect
Data architects are responsible for planning, designing, and managing a vast digital database to store and organize data. They identify the company's data requirements based on their business plan and based on that design and develop a plan to meet the company's future business requirements. They also identify the possible drawbacks or vulnerability and, based on that, create new and secure database frameworks.
Data architects work with software designers and data engineers to develop a plan for the company's data integration based on the company's strategic business goals relating to data management. They are the one who helps the company plans its data related strategic goals. Data architects must possess business intelligence to work with the top officials in a company to evaluate the data associated requirements of the company. Based on industry standards and trends, data architects help companies plan their data architecture that works for many people in many areas.
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Data architects work closely with the users, developers, system administrators, systems designers, and developers in a Project.
- Organizing data at the macro level
- Organizing data at the micro-level
- Organizing and Creating data models
- Organizing data for new application
- Connect with many different stakeholders in a company to evaluate the requirements and goals.
- Assess the current data architecture and databases
- Makes plans for an end-to-end data model for data consumption and analysis
- Create codes for new data architecture
- Make plans and create codes to integrate existing databases
- Monitor databases and report on efficiency and accuracy
- Continuously update the database as per the requirement
- Use ETL (extract, transform, load) best practices to create the database
- Research and identify new methods to obtain data
- Create secure systems to protect the database and develop standards that guarantee the safety of the systems that store and process data.
- Maintain records of all data architecture articles
Skills of Data Architect
Generally, data architects are skilled at designing data policies, creating data strategies, data warehousing, data storing, logical data modeling, physical data modeling, data querying languages, etc. They are also skilled in finding out a system that is most suitable to store, retrieve, and manage the data. They should also be experts in knowing how data can be acquired and used by an organization.
Required Skill Sets for Data Architects
- Data Analysis
- Data Acquisition
- Data Validation
- Database Design
- Data Integration
- Data Modelling
- Data Warehousing
- Data Migration Tools Knowledge
- Data Governance
- Data Security
- Data Archiving
They should have a logical mind and an attitude that exhibits:
- A curious mind
- A strong desire to establish best practices in an organization
- Should be able to appreciate the value of data architecture design patterns
- Understand the principles of data
Technical Skills Required
- Applied math and statistics
- Data visualization and data migration
- RDBMSs (relational database management systems) or foundational database skills
- DBMS - Database management system software, especially Microsoft SQL Server
- Databases such as NoSQL and cloud computing
- Programming languages, primarily Python and Java, as well as C/C++ and Perl
- Hadoop technologies, like MapReduce, Hive, and Pig
- Information management and data processing on multiple platforms
- Machine learning
- Data mining and modeling tools, especially Erwin Data Modeler, Enterprise Architect, and Visio
- Operating systems, including UNIX, Linux, Solaris, and MS-Windows
- Application server software, especially Oracle
- Backup/archival software
Business Skills for Data Architects
- Analytical Problem-Solving
- Effective Communication
- Expert Management
- Industry Knowledge
Role of a Data Architect
The role of data architects varies from one organization to another organization, and it also varies on the size of an organization. While in small companies, the role of a data architect is limited to database designing and management, in the bigger organization, the position can be very critical. Moreover, some sectors like banking, defense, education, finances have sensitive data, compromise of which can be disastrous for an organization, and national security. So, the role of data architects become much more critical in such sectors. The primary role of any data architect is to solve the data problem and keep them protected from any unauthorized access.
Data architects are generally senior-level professionals and hold an important place in a company. They are responsible for using sophisticated computer design skills to design the database for organizations that enables organizations to collect data from various sources for their business purpose. Data architects use many programming tools to create new solutions and manage data of an organization as per their business goals.
Data Architect Qualification
Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related fields is the minimum qualification required to become a data architect. Courses should cover data management, programming, system analysis, big data developments, and technology architecture for data architects. Moreover, many people become data architects with experience over the years by working in a similar field. In that case, one can acquire some big data certification courses.
Certification Courses for Data Architects
There are many certification courses available online that can be acquired by computer science or computer engineering graduates to improve the career graph. Even general graduates in science can obtain these certifications to work in the role of Data Architect, but only if they have the required skill sets.
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