Data engineers solve problems. Data architects help decide which problems are worth solving.
Most teams skip this role entirely. They have engineers who build, but nobody who decides what should be built.
Here’s what a data architect actually does:
They sit between business needs and technical implementation. Their job is to see the whole system - not just one pipeline, but how fifty pipelines interact. They ask the questions nobody else is asking: Should this exist at all? Who owns the output? What breaks when requirements change?
Concrete responsibilities:
- Designing how data flows across the organization
- Setting standards so teams don’t reinvent the wheel
- Choosing which tools belong in the stack (and which don’t)
- Making cost trade-offs visible before they become expensive
- Saying no to requests that create long-term debt
Think of it this way: data engineers build the bricks. A data architect owns the blueprint.
Without that blueprint, every team builds what makes sense locally. The result is a platform that works in pieces but fails as a whole.
Does your team have someone owning the blueprint - or just the bricks?