Principal Data Strategist

We are seeking a Principal Data Strategist to join our strategic customer portfolio. This role embeds you with our most important enterprise clients—working side-by-side with their executives, data leaders, and business stakeholders to transform how they leverage data as a strategic asset.

This is not a traditional data consultant role. As a Principal Data Strategist, you'll bridge business strategy and technical execution, owning the "why" and "what" of data transformation while partnering with architects on the "how." You'll have direct line of sight to your customers' biggest business challenges and will design the strategic roadmaps that unlock measurable value from their data investments.

As a Principal Data Strategist, you'll be at the intersection of strategy, governance, and AI enablement, helping customers build modern data platforms that drive business outcomes. You'll have the autonomy to shape strategic direction, the backing of a leading AWS Premier Partner, and the opportunity to define how data strategy is delivered at scale.

• Lead Strategic Planning Engagements: Own the full lifecycle of outcome-focused planning engagements from discovery through executive readout, helping organizations systematically leverage data as a strategic asset.
• Diagnose and Align Stakeholders: Facilitate alignment across executive sponsors and business consumers using strategy frameworks, defining measurable business outcomes that connect to real impact.
• Build Executive-Ready Business Cases: Develop TCO/ROI models and financial justifications that articulate data equity and platform investments in language that resonates with the C-suite.
• Design Data Governance Frameworks: Create operating models, stewardship structures, policies, and compliance controls for both structured and unstructured data environments.
• Deliver Implementation Roadmaps: Build actionable, phased roadmaps with clear accountability, organizational change management strategies, and realistic milestones.
• Assess Data and AI Maturity: Conduct baselining across strategy, processes, architecture, governance, and people dimensions, including AI/GenAI readiness for RAG and analytics agents.
• Drive Strategic Account Growth: Uncover new opportunities through planning engagements and collaborate with Account Executives and Customer Solutions Architects to develop the pipeline.
• Support Talent and Teams: Perform technical evaluations for strategist and architect candidates, and provide strategic guidance to engagement teams.
• Advance the Practice: Refine methodologies, create reusable frameworks, and codify lessons learned to mature Caylent's Modern Data Strategy offering.

• 4+ years in the AWS data and analytics landscape
• 10+ years in data strategy, governance, architecture, or analytics consulting with enterprise clients

• Proven ability to align data strategy with business outcomes and communicate the "why" as clearly as the "how"
• Quick learner who can rapidly understand a client's data landscape, workflows, organizational dynamics, and constraints
• Strong consulting mindset: able to diagnose, scope, and structure solutions to ambiguous data challenges
• Exceptional communicator - able to shift seamlessly between technical discussions with data architects and strategic conversations with C-suite executives
• Expert facilitator of workshops and strategy sessions with excellent storytelling skills
• Deep understanding of modern data platforms (Databricks, Snowflake, AWS-native stack)
• Experience with AI/ML strategy and hands-on use of enterprise AI platforms (Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker, or comparable)

• Data governance frameworks, data quality management, and regulatory compliance (GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, or similar)
• Strong drive to standardize methodologies and create reusable frameworks

• Willingness to travel for customer and AWS meetings

• AWS certifications or data governance certifications
• Experience working across regulated industries (financial services, insurance, healthcare, higher education)
• Background partnering with data architects and engineers to translate strategy into technical execution
• Experience building or scaling a data strategy practice within a consulting organization