About us
Appnovation is the AI Product Company. Headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, with teams around the world, Appnovation builds AI products, delivers enterprise AI and digital solutions, and co-invests with clients to bring new AI products to market.
Open source has been the foundation of Appnovation's work since 2007, and it remains the foundation underneath every AI product the company builds today. Appnovation teams work with organizations in highly regulated industries, including global leaders such as Pfizer, Google and AstraZeneca, to help them adopt AI they can govern and own.
Technology is foundational to all of Appnovation’s offerings, from consulting to digital innovation to digital product and service creation. The technology department is focused on delivering software solutions that enable rich consumer experiences, from mobile and web applications to advanced analytics and machine learning, to content and engagement management service enablement platforms.
Inherent throughout our tech capabilities is deep expertise in the Software Development Life Cycle, a drive for creativity, a passion for the craft, and collaboration with other disciplines - all foundational ingredients in successful digital experiences and client partnerships.
We are seeking a Principal Solutions Architect to define the architecture for a governed, zero-copy, cross-cloud data platform, establishing the design standards and integration priorities that guide the engineering team. Working across Databricks, Snowflake, and adjacent cloud data sources, this leader will translate an evolving product vision into concrete design specifications and a clear path toward agent-based data consumption, while ensuring alignment with the organization’s existing enterprise engineering practices. The role is accountable for owning the end-to-end solution architecture of a governed, zero-copy data platform in which data remains in place within its source systems. This position requires a senior, hands-on technical leader who can operate at the intersection of platform strategy, modern data engineering, and architectural governance — creating clarity from complexity, making sound build-versus-integrate trade-offs, and setting the technical standards that help Appnovation’s clients deliver faster, safer, and more reusable data capabilities.
ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES
Solution Architecture Ownership: Own the end-to-end solution architecture for a governed, zero-copy data platform in which data remains in place within its source systems, working across Databricks, Snowflake, and adjacent cloud data sources.
Architecture Artifacts and Standards: Produce architecture artifacts — decision records, reference architectures, and solution diagrams — establish the design standards that guide the engineering team, and provide clear build-versus-integrate recommendations.
Catalog and Metadata Integration: Define and prioritize catalog and metadata integration patterns across cloud and lakehouse environments.
Agent-Based Access Design: Design agent- and MCP-based access patterns that expose governed data products to enterprise AI tools and agent platforms.
Future-State Direction: Establish future-state direction for data products, cross-source data composition, and agentic consumption, translating an evolving product vision into concrete design specifications.
Enterprise Alignment: Ensure alignment with the organization’s existing enterprise engineering practices while guiding the engineering team toward a clear path for agent-based data consumption.
QUALIFICATIONS
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, with 10+ years of technology experience, including significant experience in solution, enterprise, or data architecture.
Senior solutions or enterprise architect with demonstrated experience designing cross-cloud and multi-cloud data architectures.
Proven application of zero-copy, data-mesh, and data-product principles,…