Lead Data Architect - Google Spanner

Job Title: Lead Data Architect - Google Spanner

Location: San Jose, CA | Scottsdale, AZ
Experience: 12-18+ Years
Primary Skill: Google Spanner (Expert Level)

Role Overview

We are seeking a Lead Data Architect with deep expertise in Google Spanner and distributed OLTP systems to define and own the target-state data architecture for a large-scale enterprise modernization initiative.

This role is responsible for ensuring functional correctness, transactional integrity, performance SLOs, and scalability for a platform supporting 1000+ downstream applications , prior to large-scale application rewrites .

Note: This is not a schema conversion or DBA role.
This is a distributed systems architecture leadership role requiring deep understanding of Spanner internals, global consistency, and transactional design.

Key Responsibilities

Data Architecture & Modeling

• Define and own the Logical Canonical Data Model (LCDM) independent of physical storage.

• Design Spanner-native physical schemas , including:

  • Primary key strategies

  • Row key distribution & hotspot avoidance

  • Table interleaving decisions

  • Secondary index and query optimization strategies

• Determine appropriate use of denormalization, projections, and materialized views .

Transaction & Consistency Design

• Define transaction boundaries under Spanner constraints:

  • Single-partition vs multi-partition transactions

  • Atomicity, consistency, and performance trade-offs

• Classify workloads by strong consistency vs bounded staleness tolerance .

• Establish idempotent, retry-safe transactional patterns .

Compatibility & Contract Validation

• Partner with QA and platform teams to validate:

  • CRUD contracts

  • Query semantics

  • Transaction invariants

• Review, validate, and sign off on schema compatibility scorecards .

Performance, Scalability & Cost

• Participate in workload replay and performance readiness analysis .

• Diagnose and mitigate:

  • Hot key risks

  • Transaction conflicts

  • Index amplification

• Size Spanner instances and estimate cost envelopes for multi-region deployments.

Technical Leadership

• Act as the final authority for all Spanner data architecture decisions.

• Mentor domain architects and senior engineers.

• Present executive-level architectural rationale and trade-off analysis.

Required Skills & Experience

Must-Have

• 10+ years of experience in large-scale data architecture

• Deep, hands-on expertise with Google Spanner internals , including:

  • TrueTime

  • Distributed transactions

  • Synchronous replication

• Proven experience designing petabyte-scale, multi-region OLTP systems

• Strong understanding of:

  • Distributed consistency models

  • Failure modes in globally distributed databases

• Prior experience migrating from Oracle or monolithic RDBMS to distributed databases (highly preferred)

Strong Plus

• Experience leading enterprise-wide data platform modernization

• Ability to influence architecture decisions across multiple teams and domains

• Strong communication skills for executive and stakeholder engagement

Key Deliverables

• Canonical Logical Data Model (LCDM)

• Spanner physical schemas and index strategies

• Transaction design and consistency guidelines

• Performance and scalability readiness assessments

• Migration readiness sign-off per domain