According to PayScale.com, data architects earn an average salary of over $120,000 annually and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) predicts that employment for database professionals is going to increase by 8% from 2020-2030. The growth is due to the increased importance of businesses to store and organize data.
The fast-changing world of technology is creating new jobs and new work to discover. Today, we are focusing on the role of a data architect and what exactly becoming one entails.
What’s a Data Architect?
The exact role of a data architect is to turn business requirements into technical requirements. They set the standard for how data is defined and their principles. They visualize and design a business’s data management framework. Doing so will lay out how the processes of plans acquire, maintain, and retrieve data.
Data architects are also able to create a standard business vocabulary, describe requirements for strategies, create an outline that is high-level and meets the established requirements, and also line up the enterprise strategy with the architecture of the business.
Data Architect vs. Data Engineer vs. Data Scientist
It is easy to misconstrue data architects and data engineers. They are similar, but it’s easiest to think of a data architect as a more advanced data engineer. They actually can work together to make the enterprise data management framework. While a data architect has the job of creating the visual of the “blueprint”, the data engineer puts the framework to work.
Data architects and data scientists are also closely related. The data architect will work on turning the business requirements into technical requirements. Data scientists will work on how to apply computer science, mathematics, and statistics in order to build a model.
Top 10 Responsibilities for Data Architects
- Knowing how to turn the requirements of the business into technical terms, like data streams, integrations, transformations, databases, and data warehouses
- Specifying data architecture framework, standards, and principles. This includes modeling, metadata, security, reference data (product codes and client categories), and master data (clients, vendors, materials, and employees)
- Interpreting reference architecture to spell out the pattern that other people can follow to make and enhance their data system
- Ability to characterize a data flow, like what part of the business can generate data, what part needs data to work, how a data flow is handled, and how data can change while transitioning
- Working well and being able to explain solutions clearly with many different departments, stakeholders, partners, and external vendors
- Creating data processing models that work with the planned business model
- Making visuals of key data entities and how they are related
- Having an excellent amount of knowledge and thorough understanding of the cloud, databases, applications, and programs
- Showing enthusiasm for continuing their learning and education in the world of technology
- A degree in information technology, computer science, or computer engineering
Start Your Data Architecture Career
It is incredibly important to keep up with trends in how technology is changing. Knowing how to anticipate the future of what customers will want and how the market will inevitably shift is how to keep ahead of the curve and stay relevant in this line of work.
Learn how to plan, design and implement enterprise data infrastructure solutions and create the blueprints for your organization’s data success with the Data Architect Nanodegree program.
