Data Architect -Fintech/Banking

Data Architect Location: New York City, NY (Onsite) Position Summary STAFFXPERT LLC is seeking a Data Architect on behalf of our client in New York City, NY. We are looking for an experienced and analytical Data Architect to help modernize and optimize complex enterprise database environments within a highly regulated ecosystem. The ideal candidate will possess deep expertise in relational database architecture, SQL performance optimization, and legacy system modernization. This role requires the ability to analyze undocumented database environments, reverse engineer schema structures, and infer business workflows through data patterns, application behavior, and system interactions. The successful candidate will also bring a strong understanding of Java-based applications interacting with enterprise databases, including ORM frameworks, transactional processing, and schema maintenance logic. This is an excellent opportunity for a highly motivated professional who enjoys solving complex technical challenges and driving scalable, high-performance data solutions. Key Responsibilities • Reverse engineer complex database schemas, including tables, indexes, constraints, stored procedures, functions, triggers, and views. • Analyze production-representative data to identify entities, relationships, cardinality, workflows, and business logic. • Reconstruct logical and physical ER models and document current-state database architectures. • Review Java application and service-layer code to understand database access patterns, ORM mappings, transactional workflows, and schema maintenance behavior. • Redesign database schemas and data models to improve performance, scalability, data integrity, and maintainability. • Optimize SQL queries, execution plans, indexing strategies, partitioning, and storage approaches. • Support enterprise database administration activities, including backup and recovery, replication, high availability, disaster recovery, monitoring, security, upgrades, and migrations. • Create technical documentation, ER diagrams, migration strategies, and architectural recommendations. • Collaborate with engineering and infrastructure teams to improve database and application performance. • Provide actionable architectural insights to support long-term modernization initiatives. Required Qualifications • 5+ years of experience as a Data Architect, Database Architect, or in a related role. • Strong expertise in relational database architecture, SQL optimization, and performance tuning. • Proven experience reverse engineering undocumented or legacy database systems. • Deep understanding of: • Entity Relationship (ER) modeling • Database normalization principles • Indexing strategies • Query optimization and execution plans • Join optimization and relational database performance tuning • Strong ability to infer business workflows from schema design, data structures, and application interactions. • Read-level proficiency in Java with hands-on understanding of: • Spring / Spring Boot • Hibernate / JPA • JDBC • Service-layer database interactions • Experience working with enterprise database platforms such as SQL Server, AWS RDS, or similar technologies. • Familiarity with schema versioning, CI/CD pipelines, cloud database environments, and monitoring tools. • Strong analytical, investigative, and documentation skills. • Excellent communication skills with the ability to translate technical findings into practical architecture recommendations. Preferred Qualifications • Experience working within financial services, fintech, or other highly regulated industries. • Strong systems-thinking mindset focused on scalability, reliability, and performance optimization. • Experience working independently in environments with limited documentation. • Demonstrated stability in prior roles with a consistent track record of long-term contributions.