Data Architect Jobs in Chicago, IL

The Data Architect designs and implements the conceptual, logical, and physical data architecture within Snowflake that captures the full breadth of Nuveen's sales and marketing operations, including intermediary channel performance (wirehouses, independent broker-dealers, RIAs, banks), institutional relationships (consultants, plan sponsors, endowments, foundations, sovereign wealth funds), territory management, product flows across asset classes, AUM and flows analytics, marketing engagement, and client journey data. This role requires a deep understanding of cloud data architecture principles, modern data product design, and the nuances of asset management distribution. The Data Architect serves as a key partner to business stakeholders, data engineering, and downstream platform owners, ensuring that data structures and curated data products on Snowflake or purpose-built to feed Salesforce, Sitecore, Tableau, and other downstream consumers reliably and at scale. The incumbent is expected to proactively shape the platform's data governance posture, optimize Snowflake performance and cost, and continuously align the architecture with evolving business and regulatory needs.

Key Responsibilities and Duties

• Owns the end-to-end data architecture of the Snowflake platform, including conceptual, logical, and physical data models that represent asset management sales and marketing operations across intermediary and institutional channels, product hierarchies, territory and coverage structures, AUM and flows, and client/prospect engagement.
• Designs, builds, and curates reusable data products within Snowflake that serve as authoritative sources for downstream systems including Salesforce, Sitecore, and Tableau, ensuring contracts, SLAs, and consumption patterns are well defined.
• Establishes and enforces data governance standards on the Snowflake platform, including data domain ownership, naming conventions, metadata, lineage, access controls, masking and row-level security, and compliance with regulatory requirements relevant to asset management (e.g., SEC, FINRA, GDPR, CCPA).
• Collaborates with business stakeholders in sales, marketing, distribution strategy, and product to gather requirements and translate them into scalable data models and data products that support both intermediary channel analytics (sales activity, redemptions, gross/net flows by firm and advisor) and institutional analytics (consultant influence, mandate pipeline, RFP activity, relationship coverage).
• Partners with data engineering teams on ingestion patterns, transformation frameworks (e.g., dbt), orchestration, and CI/CD practices to ensure efficient, well-tested, and observable data pipelines feeding Snowflake.
• Develops and maintains dimensional models, star and snowflake schemas, data vault structures, and semantic layers that power business intelligence in Tableau, personalization in Sitecore, and operational use cases in Salesforce Sales and Marketing Clouds.
• Supports integration of data from multiple structured and unstructured sources, including third-party intermediary data providers (e.g., Broadridge, Salesforce Asset Management Cloud feeds, DST, SS&C), institutional data sources, market and benchmark data, CRM, marketing automation, and digital engagement platforms.
• Conducts data profiling and quality analysis to identify gaps, redundancies, and integrity issues, and drives remediation through model and pipeline improvements.
• Monitors and tunes Snowflake for performance, scalability, and cost efficiency, applying best practices around warehouse sizing, clustering, materialized views, caching, and workload isolation.
• Communicates data architecture designs, trade-offs, and roadmaps to technical and non-technical audiences, including senior leadership and cross-functional business partners.
• Provides guidance and mentorship to data modelers, engineers, and analysts on cloud data architecture, modeling techniques, and asset management domain concepts.

Educational Requirements

• University (Degree) Preferred

Work Experience

• 5+ Years Required; 7+ Years Preferred

Physical Requirements

• Physical Requirements: Sedentary Work

Career Level
8IC

Required Skills:

• 5+ Years of experience in data architecture, data modeling, or a related data discipline, with at least 3 years directly supporting asset management, wealth management, or broader financial services distribution functions.
• Hands-on experience architecting solutions on Snowflake, including security and access frameworks (RBAC, row-/column-level security), data sharing, Snowpark, streams and tasks, performance tuning, and cost governance.
• Demonstrated proficiency in conceptual, logical, and physical data modeling techniques, including dimensional modeling, entity-relationship modeling, and data vault methodologies, with experience building semantic layers for BI consumption.
• Experience designing and operating data products with clear ownership, contracts, documentation, and consumer SLAs, ideally within a data mesh or domain-oriented architecture.
• Strong understanding of how the asset management industry operates across both intermediary channels (warehouses, IBDs, RIAs, banks, DCIO) and institutional channels (consultants, plan sponsors, endowments, foundations, insurance general accounts), including AUM/flows analytics, sales crediting, territory and coverage models, product structures (mutual funds, ETFs, SMAs, CITs, alternatives, model portfolios), and intermediary data sources such as Broadridge.

Preferred Skills:

• Working knowledge of Salesforce (Financial Services Cloud or Sales/Marketing Cloud), Sitecore, and Tableau, with a clear understanding of how Snowflake data models support each of these downstream platforms.
• Strong SQL skills; experience with data modeling tools (Erwin, SqlDBM, or similar), transformation frameworks such as dbt, and orchestration tools (Airflow, Matillion, or equivalent).
• Familiarity with data governance frameworks, data quality management practices, and metadata/catalog tools (e.g., Collibra, Alation, Atlan), and with regulatory considerations relevant to asset management.

Related Skills

Business Acumen, Data Preprocessing, Data Science, Innovation, Machine Learning (ML), Market/Industry Dynamics, Predictive Modeling, Programming, Statistics

Anticipated Posting End Date:

2026-06-30

Base Pay Range: $118,000/yr - $149,000/yr

Actual base salary may vary based upon, but not limited to, relevant experience, time in role, base salary of internal peers, prior performance, business sector, and geographic location. In addition to base salary, the competitive compensation package may include, depending on the role, participation in an incentive program linked to performance (for example, annual discretionary incentive programs, non-annual sales incentive plans, or other non-annual incentive plans).

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Company Overview

Nuveen is a global investment leader, managing public and private assets for clients around the world and on behalf of TIAA, our parent company and one of the world’s largest institutional investors. We invest in the growth of businesses, real estate, infrastructure and natural capital, providing clients with the reliability, access and foresight unique to our heritage. Our prevailing perspective on the future drives our ambition to innovate and adapt our business to the changing needs of investors - all to pursue lasting performance for our clients, our communities and our global economy. Visit www.nuveen.com to learn more about us.

Our Culture of Impact

At TIAA, we're on a mission to build on our 100+ year legacy of delivering for our clients while evolving to meet tomorrow's challenges. We equip our associates with future-focused skills and AI tools that enable us to advance our mission. Together, we are fighting to ensure a more secure financial future for all and for generations to come. We are guided by our values: Champion Our People, Be Client Obsessed, Lead with Integrity, Own It, and Win As One. They influence every decision we make and how we work together to serve our clients every day. We thrive in a collaborative in-office environment where teams work across organizational boundaries with shared purpose, accelerating innovation and delivering meaningful results. Our workplace brings together TIAA and Nuveen's entrepreneurial spirit, where we work hard and work together to create lasting impact. Here, every associate can grow through meaningful learning experiences and development pathways—because when our people succeed, our impact on clients' lives grows stronger.

Benefits and Total Rewards

The organization is committed to making financial well-being possible for its clients, and is equally committed to the well-being of our associates. That’s why we offer a comprehensive Total Rewards package designed to make a positive difference in the lives of our associates and their loved ones. Our benefits include a superior retirement program and highly competitive health, wellness and work life offerings that can help you achieve and maintain your best possible physical, emotional and financial well-being. To learn more about your benefits, please review our Benefits Summary .

Equal Opportunity

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. TIAA does not discriminate against any candidate or employee on the basis of age, race, color, national origin, sex, religion, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other legally protected status.

Our full EEO & Non-Discrimination statement is on our careers home page , and you can read more about your rights and view government notices.

Accessibility Support

TIAA offers support for those who need assistance with our online application process to provide an equal employment opportunity to all job seekers, including individuals with disabilities.

If you are a U.S. applicant and desire a reasonable accommodation to complete a job application please use one of the below options to contact our accessibility support team:

Phone: (800) 842-2755

Email: accessibility.support@tiaa.org

Drug and Smoking Policy

TIAA maintains a drug-free and smoke/free workplace.