Data Architect

ABOUT THE JOB

The ACLU seeks applicants for the full-time position of Data Architect in the Product Engineering division of the Technology Department at the ACLU’s National office in New York, NY, Washington, DC, or San Francisco, CA . This is a hybrid role that has in-office requirements of two (2) days per week or eight (8) days per month.

The ACLU Technology Department is a broad umbrella covering both the ACLU’s Analytics and its Product Engineering teams, two robust and innovative divisions that power the work of the ACLU. The department provides trusted, dependable, and impactful analytics, engineering, as well as product design and management expertise for the ACLU. In partnership with experts across the ACLU, the technology team delivers best-in-class solutions, services, and innovation that advance the ACLU mission and organizational priorities.

The Tech team strives to ensure the ACLU leads by example in the ethical use of technology by ensuring privacy and security standards are maintained, directional insights are used to inform programming and business strategy, best-in-class products are designed to get the ACLU message out into the world and grow the ACLU supporter base, as well as to help steward high standards for algorithmic fairness, accountability, and transparency. The ideal candidate is an experienced data architect or principal engineer with extensive experience in designing and implementing large-scale, high-performance enterprise-level data management solutions and architectural designs that address complex organizational, compliance, and data governance requirements. The ideal candidate would also have demonstrated expertise in conceptual, logical, and physical data modeling to manage highly complex data structures. Equally important, the ideal candidate has a track record of building trust and alignment with both technical and business stakeholders, translating complex data concepts for non-technical audiences, and navigating competing priorities across teams to drive shared outcomes.

This position is part of a collective bargaining unit. It is represented by ACLU Staff United (ASU).

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Reporting to the Director of Engineering, Data , the Data Architect will join the Data Pod, which leads the ACLU’s operational data engineering efforts. In this role, you will design and implement scalable data architecture solutions, support data governance initiatives, ensure compliance with privacy regulations, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to support the ACLU’s mission through robust data strategies and systems. Your work will ensure that the ACLU and its affiliates can execute fundraising, advocacy, and engagement strategies while prioritizing data privacy and security.

YOUR DAY TO DAY

You will build, optimize, and maintain conceptual and logical data models and database architecture in support of operational and data analytics systems.

You will partner with technical and non-technical stakeholders to understand, document, and optimize data flows across the ACLU's ecosystem, facilitating working sessions and presenting trade-offs in ways that help stakeholders make informed decisions.

You will architect and build a consent management data model and data flows to ensure the ACLU is compliant with privacy legislation and constituent preferences.

You will design and evolve several other enterprise data architectural efforts – as needed – by defining resilient and scalable data models, integration patterns and governance standards that are performant, secure by design and highly reliable.

You will play a key role in the migration of our primary fundraising CRM, helping architect future state together with analytics and fundraising stakeholders.

You will work with business leaders across the organization to understand, document, and deliver on compliance, performance, and security requirements; you will help define and execute on an organizational data governance strategy

You will sit on our operational data engineering team and provide technical leadership by partnering with our data engineering and analytics engineering teams to establish architecture best practices, review solution designs and RFCs, guide implementation decisions, and ensure data engineering consistency across the technology team.

You will partner with privacy engineering to ensure data retention, deletion and access requests are compliant and performant.

You will improve overall data reliability, quality, accessibility, and security; you will anticipate potential issues and propose right-sized solutions.

You will write clear, detailed, concise documentation, including architecture diagrams, reference architecture, data flows, data models, design, and implementation plans for both technical and business audiences

You will grow the team's technical expertise through mentorship and provide technical guidance to peers

You will help build a culture of growth and learning. You will stay a…