Staff Data Architect, CNN Data Analytics, Science & Insights.

When we say, “the stuff dreams are made of,” we’re not just referring to the world of wizards, dragons and superheroes, or even to the wonders of Planet Earth. Behind WBD’s vast portfolio of iconic content and beloved brands, are the storytellers bringing our characters to life, the creators bringing them to your living rooms and the dreamers creating what’s next…

From brilliant creatives, to technology trailblazers, across the globe, WBD offers career defining opportunities, thoughtfully curated benefits, and the tools to explore and grow into your best selves. Here you are supported, here you are celebrated, here you can thrive.

We are the now and the next. The power behind the people building the future. We are born from the spirit of innovation. We are created from the idea that people around the world want more, need more, deserve more. We are the home of the global digital revolution. We are CNN.

To see what it’s like to work at CNN, follow @WBDLife on Instagram and X!

To see what it’s like to work at CNN, follow @WBDLife on Instagram and X!
We are CNN. The world’s most essential and engaging source of digital news. We are in the midst of rapid transformation and are looking for the next generation of innovators, makers, and dreamers to help lead our growth and shape the future of news.

Your New Role…
The Staff Data Architect plays a critical, hands‑on role in evolving and strengthening CNN’s modern data ecosystem. This is a platform‑focused role for a senior technologist who thrives at scale—designing and implementing robust, performant, and governed data architecture that powers analytics, reporting, and decision‑making across the organization.

• Design and implement scalable data architecture patterns on Snowflake to support high‑volume event and analytics workloads, with a strong focus on performance, security, and cost efficiency through query optimization, warehouse sizing, storage management, and governance best practices.

• Lead the technical design and implementation of complex data systems and platform enhancements, establishing and maintaining architecture and data modeling standards that promote consistency, scalability, and reliability across Snowflake and dbt workflows.

• Define and implement secure, scalable data access patterns, leveraging role‑based access control and managed access schemas to ensure data is governed, auditable, and accessible to the right audiences.

• Design and operate data quality and observability frameworks, using dbt tests and monitoring tools to track pipeline health, latency, and freshness, and to continuously improve platform reliability and operational visibility.

• Partner closely with platform engineering and analytics teams to improve system reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency, contributing to platform architecture planning and technical roadmaps.

• Translate complex analytics and business requirements into clean, well‑governed semantic data models that enable trusted self‑service analytics and consistent metrics across BI tools.

• Define and implement data lifecycle and retention strategies that balance performance, cost efficiency, compliance, and data availability across the analytics platform.

• Act as a technical mentor and thought leader, helping grow the skills of engineers and analysts and raising the overall bar for data architecture and engineering practices.

• 5–8 years of experience in data engineering, data architecture, or a related field, with demonstrated ownership of production data systems or platform components.

• Deep expertise in cloud data warehousing, with hands‑on experience in Snowflake, including performance tuning, security design, cost optimization, and large‑scale data modeling.

• Strong experience designing and maintaining dbt‑based transformation workflows, including testing, performance optimization, and deployment best practices.

• Experience working with event or clickstream data, ideally using Snowplow or comparable technologies, and a strong understanding of instrumentation and processing challenges at scale.

• Proven ability to design and implement semantic layers and analytics‑ready data models that serve as a trusted source of truth for BI tools such as Looker, Tableau, or Domo.

• Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to non‑technical audiences, influence architectural decisions, and build alignment across teams.

• Experience with Customer Data Platforms (CDPs).

• Experience with data orchestration tools such as Airflow or Dagster.

• Familiarity with data privacy and compliance requirements (e.g., GDPR, CCPA).

• Experience working in the media, publishing, or digital content industry.

This last bit is probably the most important! Here at WBD, our guiding principles are the core values by which we operate and are central to how we get things done. You can find them at www.wbd.com/guiding-principles/ along with some insights from the team on what they mean and how they show up in their day to day. We hope they resonate with you and look forward to discussing them during your interview.

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