Director, Principal Data Architect

JOB SUMMARY

The Director, Principal Data Architect shapes the data foundation for Universal Destinations & Experiences’ (UDX) growth, innovation, and AI transformation. Leading the data architecture pillar, this role translates the Enterprise Data & AI vision into an executable strategy and target-state architecture that modernizes platforms and enables advanced analytics, intelligent automation, and AI-powered solutions.

The role leads the design of end-to-end data solutions, including data models, integration patterns, and data platform architecture. Partnering with business and technology leaders, the role connects architecture decisions to measurable improvements in guest experience, revenue, and operations. This hands-on leader develops the data architecture team, owns data governance design and architecture standards, and leads the Data Architecture Review Board—providing clear direction and decisive recommendations that enable teams to build trusted, secure, and reusable data capabilities at enterprise scale.

MAJOR

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Data Strategy, Vision & Target-State Design: Treat data as a strategic business asset, ensuring architecture decisions are grounded in measurable business value, including guest experience, revenue, cost, and risk. Translate the enterprise data and AI strategy into the data architecture strategy, guiding principles, and multi-year target-state design aligned to UDX business priorities across guest, commercial, and operational domains. As part of target-state design, evaluate and recommend data platform capabilities, tools, and patterns (e.g., cloud data warehouse and lakehouse, streaming, integration, cataloging, observability), including build/buy/reuse decisions and rationalization of redundant capabilities. Work directly with business and technology stakeholders to translate needs into clear architectural direction, documented as architecture decisions.

• Data Architecture Standards & Alignment: Author, publish, and continuously evolve UDX data architecture and data governance standards, including data modeling, integration and interoperability, metadata and lineage, master and reference data, and security and access patterns. Chair the Data Architecture Review Board (DARB), UDX’s decision-making body for data architecture, and own its charter, entry criteria, review cadence, decision rights, and escalation paths. Review solution designs from internal teams, delivery partners, and vendors, issue clear recommendations (approve, approve with conditions, or reject) in adherence with UDX standards, and govern exceptions and architectural debt through to closure.

• Data Governance Design Ownership: Serve as the enterprise owner of data governance design, defining the governance framework, operating model, data ownership and stewardship structures, data domain definitions, data quality standards and controls, classification, lineage, and retention policies. Embed privacy-by-design, regulatory, and data residency requirements into architecture in partnership with Information Security, Privacy, and Legal. Define governance-by-design patterns so controls are built into platforms and pipelines, and partner with platform and engineering teams to ensure governance designs are implemented and adopted.

• Data Readiness for AI: Define the architecture that makes enterprise data AI-ready, including canonical data models, semantic layers, ontologies and knowledge graphs, data contracts, and feature and vector data patterns supporting ML, generative AI, and agentic use cases. Establish standards for AI data quality, lineage, observability, and responsible use. Assess data readiness for proposed AI initiatives and define remediation paths before build commitments are made.

• Practice Leadership & Development: Lead, coach, and develop data architects, including team members and partner resources, setting clear expectations and quality bars. Build a consistent, repeatable data architecture practice